Plum Tree Among The Skyscrapers,

She's travelled for years through tangled forests and formal gardens,

edged along hedgerows, set up her stall on tenanted farms, then moved on,

restless, empty handed,

sometimes,

sometimes with fruit in her arms.

She's hopscotched through graveyards and parks, settled down in allotments,

clung to a church roof by a toe.

She's pitched camp on verges and hard shoulders, stumbled

on threadbare moors above the tree line and slummed it on wasteland,

But dug in on steep hillsides and rough ground.

She was queen of the May on a roundabout

once in a roundabout way.

She's piggybacked across trading estates,

hitched in a mistle thrush beak, drifted with thistledown.

She's thumbed a lift into town.

Now here she is in a slab in a city square,

in a square mile mirrored by glass and steel, dwarfed by money

and the fancy talk. Hand-me-down brush, pre-loved broom,

to the paid by the minute suits and umbrellas and lunchtime shoppers.

She's a poor Cinderella rootling about

in a potting compost of burger boxes and popped poppers.

In that world, orchard and orphaned are one and the the same.

But she's here to stay plum in the middle -

And today she's fizzing with light and colour,

outshining the smug sculptures

and blubbering Fountains. Scented and powdered

She's staging a one tree show

with hi-viz blossoms and lip gloss petals.

She'll season the pavements and polished stones with something like snow.