A Millennium Stocking-Filler
In the supermarket
they are selling 5000-year-old trees
for £1.99 apiece.
They are a couple of inches high,
and the shelf contains – maybe – a couple of billion years' worth.
They come in tiny pots
with a printed suggestion they might be ready for planting in your garden
about fifty years from now.
Just think,
if Jesus had shopped at a supermarket
and planted one of these trees in Nazareth,
it would still be three millennia short of full growth.
At the rate we're going
I'm dubious
whether the trees they are selling will last five thousand years from now.
I wonder if they give a guarantee?
December 13, 1999
