On finishing reading Gilbert White by Richard Mabey

As clear as Christmas, I see the catkins she pointed out
on our nature walk along the lane behind the school,
finch-green with a secret yellow, dusted from the pores
and crevices of each tiny lantern-bell.

How high they seemed to hang to the children holding hands;
how gently bowed their branches to our ground.
Each catkin spoke of some direct connection
between the tree and the pet, the sound of trees, the purr.
So pussy-willow with its fur and little leather cap,
its white eye and straight limb, had to be some hybrid
in a world the catkins knew, but we could only dream of.
Although she knew. She took us there and showed us
something in the trees that had no name.

Like you, we wait for its returning every spring.
Some of us still think it worth a note in an email to a friend.
How the frogspawn sparkled in the pond in early March
but disappeared by Easter Day. How rarely now the swallows
fly above the house, and, whilst a blue tit fires itself
from the nesting box on the shed, how the heart aches
for a martlet in the eaves, or a nightjar on the evening breeze.