The Friday Poem: ‘To the trees of summer’ by Marty Smith
New poetry – actually, she sent it in on Thursday, and we have rushed it to the head of the queue in these dry days of summer – by Hawkes Bay writer Marty Smith.
To the trees of summer
If we could start the poem again,
walking backwards
in a waterlogged sky which refuses to rain
and say to the trees: Sorry.
We opened every can, every fruit.
You know how it goes.
Only say sorry if you mean it. Then worry
is the large fish flapping in the small bowl of our body
when we watch the hot wind parch the grass
to gasping
and the small trees hang down
their desperate leaves.
Sorry. From your obdurate children.
Marty Smith, 2017.
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Marty Smith
Marty Smith lives in Hawke's Bay. She is author of It Gets In Your Blood: Lives Of A Racecourse.
