In The Silver Birch at The Botanics, Maggie Mackay honours her parents through a memorial tree rooted in renewal. Beneath catkins and bluebells, life gathers; bark sheds like tears, and a woodpeckers' forage turns grief into a quiet celebration of enduring love.

Our memorial tree stands in a grove of six,
leans back on its black rugged base
deep-rooted in the soil, a celebration.

Male and female catkins keep company,
as husband and wife, father and mother,
souls intertwined in spring renewal.

Grasses, mosses, wood anemone,
a clump of bluebell gather beneath its shelter,
draw blue through light-green leaf canopy.

A woodpecker forages for grubs in a branch.
White bark is paper tissue curl, it sheds like tears.
Diamond fissures grow henna dark-deep.