One Day you were planted: Who saw you grow? Whose hands were first to pick your fruits? And you grew, many springtimes sparkled through your boughs, where your blossoms floated; many summers where your fruit, ripened with the sun high over Stroud. Apple those beauty surely spanned two-world wars, standing like a handsome woman, with her hair down, as around her roots a badger kingdom threw up humps of earth. Bounty and beauty, between them, the apple tree and the badgers, thrived down the years, until people stopped coming, to dig and grow around them. It was just another day in her growth rings, when the peace around her, was ruined by machines. The chainsaws and the diggers, though were met, a gathering of Strouds boldest, to defend the bountiful apple, and her blessed badgers below. That Autumn her last windfall, the Stroud skyline would know her blossom no more, as protestors willfully, stood to defend, your cause, you their ragtag totem, while blindly work went ahead, alas! you fell, But we'd shown them, we don't suffer greedy developers gladly! Apple tree, may you live on, in Stroud Apple Town! RobinCollins 2013
