From the Hill by Richard Martin

Half way between where I sat near the hilltop
and a lonely copper beech in a square green field
stood a group of dark trees huddled together.
For no particular reason, I began to count them –

there were seven, that magic, meaningful number;
had someone deliberately planted seven trees?
Or had they accidentally echoed human concerns
about fortune and meaning? I asked myself

why we are so fascinated by seven rather than six –
I guess it all began when someone added the four
corners of the earth to the notion of the Trinity,
or simply thought of the days of the week.

Whatever, there are seven trees bent slightly
towards each other by pure chance in a dull clump
at the edge of a rough unploughed field half way
between me and that lonely beech in its green square.



Richard Martin is an English writer who lives in the Netherlands close to the point where Belgium, Germany and Holland meet. After retiring as a university teacher in Germany, he turned his attention to writing, and has published three collections of poetry and numerous poems in magazines in England, the US, and Austria.