Diminutive

Today where a white house, years back, stood,

The spruces sigh seas above my head;

Now the house has gone, perhaps for good,

The trees tell all its occupants said.

And when I first looked twenty years ago

The tops of those spruces scratch-kissed my knee;

But since, of the two most obvious ways to grow,

I've grown down, or up has grown each tree.

I tilt my head this summer afternoon; mouse-small,

Gaze up at their dark conferring in the breeze,

As the lordly sun above them lounges in his blue hall;

There is but one who among them sees

How their group stands still at my old knee height:

I'm not the giant I used to be, somehow,

Whose high dark head then barred blind light

From such as stand to me like giants now.

Gerry Cambridge

© Gerry Cambridge.  From The Shell House,
Scottish Cultural Press; reprinted by permission
of the author.