In the Botanics: Edinburgh

Here is the poem which I mentioned in my last post which Tom Pow wrote upon meeting Marian in the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. I rather like it:

An hour till dusk. The castle lodges its span
in the crook of a giant sycamore.
Through arteries of beech, the domes and spires
of the city turn to a scattered fan
of embers. I kick chestnuts from the path
and, like a bird scattering through the black
skirts of a rhododendron, forage back
into my past. That's when your airy laugh
calls me. Maria Angeles Huarte,
your daughters share spirits with the squirrels
they feed, dancing between silver birch light.
You yourself know the moment's poetry:
"See!" the sooty heron's labouring flight,
the cyprus where its wings stumble and curl.