Spring

How the apricot saplings have grown, impervious

to those brutalising cockatoos and crows -
penned in like an infant behind two-foot bars
green wire mesh armour warding
off field mice and a Labrador smarting
from its first March Fly bite – how the hard
little nectarines ripen and spill stones
how the butternuts grow in unbecoming briars,
their seeds flung down by cockatoos and crows,
how the loquat saplings age unwatered and alone.