"Weathering" by Alastair Reid

I am old enough now for a tree

once planted, knee high, to have grown to be

twenty times me,

and to have seen babies marry, and heroes grow deaf –

but that’s enough meaning-of-life.

It’s living through time we ought to be connoisseurs of.

From wearing a face all this time, I am made aware

of the maps faces are, of the inside wear and tear.

I take to faces that have come far.

In my father’s carved face, the bright eye

He sometimes would look out of, seeing a long way

through all the tree-rings of his history.

I am awed by how things weather: an oak mantel

in the house in Spain, fingered to a sheen,

the marks of hands leaned into the lintel,

the tokens in the drawer I sometimes touch –

a crystal lived-in on a trip, the watch

my father’s wrist wore to a thin gold sandwich.

It is an equilibrium

which breasts the cresting seasons but still stays calm

and keeps warm. It deserves a good name.

Weathering. Patina, gloss and whorl.

The trunk of the almond tree, gnarled but still fruitful.

Weathering is what I would like to do well.