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.

---

The Spinoff Review of Books is brought to you by Unity Books.