Walk with me along Nevill Park, past rhododendrons, and eleven Victorian villas
whose cedar trees, with massive limbs,
time-twisted and ever green, ever see
the hasty progression of our species.

Imagine a carriage (not that Mercedes-Benz)
and picture porcelain pots in place of plumbing.
Ignore the years of hemline creep. Embrace past generations.

Exchange today’s for prior wars.
Or contemporary effects, for the dawn, of industrialization.
And here you’ll stand, in say 1853,
beside this very cedar.

Now loose your gaze, high, into its needled canopy.
Breathe: Cedrus Libani.
And consider what –
if anything –
could surprise a tree.