Taken from our ‘Time’ issue, read Shirley Wright’s poem, Methuselah, inspired by the 5,000 year old pine tree of the same name. Illustrated by Glenn Harvey.

You show your age these days,
there’s no more hiding it. Winter winds
must give you jip, those grey arthritic
limbs wearied on the wheel of years.

Green grown, your canopy has counted
twenty times the transit of Venus,
waved endlessly at Halley passing by,
nodded as the pyramids went up

and bombs rained down. Back in your
Neolithic nursery, with Stone Age yahoos
bashing heads against your toddler trunk,
did you dream of mobile phones or botox,

the space race, that the white face smiling
from the conquered moon would be ours?
I’d like to lie beneath your shade and talk
to you, listen to you. Wait it out with you.

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