The Moreton Bay Fig

It still stands, old wounds scabbed in gum, the moreton bay fig that I climbed as a child and stabbed to harvest the white bleed of its hurt. High in its branches I cut my initials in the soft bark to claim the highest climb. It was the tallest tree in my childhood. A lifetime on it arches its shade over of the waste from a building site. A barbed wire fence keeps children out. I look up into its wide reach and wonder if it still remembers me now that my initials have healed to a scarred anonymity.