Elliot Rose says, “I wrote this poem for a personal development task earlier in the year when Pam asked us to create a metaphor for the mind using any medium we wished. I looked out of my lounge window and saw a tree that had been there all the time but I had never taken the time to notice it before and the words just grew from there.”

What if your mind was like an apple tree,
that grew with time from one small seed?
Within that seed a blueprint be,
a mighty plan for your mind-like tree.

The roots fulfil a basic urgency
of hunger, thirst and security.
Growing thick, earth-bound cable.
Establish presence, making you stable.

And, like your spinal cord erect,
a trunk emerges to connect.
Sprouting branches, skyward grows,
like neuron fashioned internal lobes.

Picture the shape of your apple tree.
Filtering leaves distort what you see.
Scatty shadows, diffuse sight,
leafy breaks let through the light.

Blossoms flourish among your leaves
entice pollinating busy bees.
They bumble and buzz around your frame.
External influences in a genetic game?

From each blossom a fruit shall grow.
Emerge like thoughts, but not all on show.
Camouflaged by your many branches.
Obscured by your wind-swept, hypnotic dances.

Like an apple, thoughts may turn bad.
Ferment and fester into something mad.
Life could appear to rot away.
But within, those seeds will grow again.