London Plane

[hamartia]

Hello! I'm really very new to poetry - I write a lot but am used to short stories, and so on - and I'd love it if you could have a look over this and tell me what you think. I wrote it a while ago and found it recently, and I'd like to use it as a starting point. Anyway, here goes. Thanks in advance!

London Plane

My favourite trees will forever be those
that keep their nuts long after their leaves,
post-natal depression forcing their saplings
out of existence and into hanging limbo.
These compact memorials to autumns past
cling to the bowed tips of their branches,
like childhood baubles placed with loving precarity
where only small hands can reach,
or too-heavy earrings punched through papery lobes,
over-ripe and uncomfortable.

Were I to find that form at some point in my time,
I fear I would only do the same -
hold my offspring to my chest with tight-tethered reins
that drag me to the floor with worry
whenever the wind blows too quickly for my liking,
whenever rain threatens our solidity.
I would break my own back to stop them straightening theirs,
the way my mother once did for me -
become my own gravestone, populate my own parish
with unkept promises of life.