An Extract (from something I'll probably never write any more of...)

‘I find the Sycamore to be the most melancholic of the trees…’ philosophised Francis, as sycamore keys fluttered to the ground near where he and Red were perched.

‘Why’s that?’ Questioned Red, on auto-pilot.

‘Because it sounds like the French “sick of l’amour”, “sick of love” – picture a tree so weary of the world that it is sick of love, we are sat beneath it.’ Expounded Francis, extending a Wildean arm.

Red sighed inwardly and escaped his friend's offensively poor wordplay by picturing the sycamore as a callous sexual conquistador, traversing the riverbank and fucking its way through the foliage. He saw as it tore its great roots from the soil and, trailing clods of earth over the ground, sidled casually towards a willow, stroking her canopy with one of his more tender branches.

She shudders, tenses and backs away a little. He persists, brushing one of her intimate boughs. Red sees her long, slender shoots shiver. She acquiesces and he slides a strong limb inside a tight knot on her trunk, and with another grasps a branchful of her soft leaves and pulls it taught. She gasps –

‘What’s going on?’ Asked Francis, as Red sat, glaze-eyed against the trunk of the sycamore.

‘I was imagining the trees fucking.’ Murmured Red.

Francis looked, in a way that he imagined was both quizzical and judgmental, at Red for a few moments before a wayward Frisbee caught him in the forehead, at which point he suspected they were probably on an even footing in the dignity stakes.