Three Poems

Neglect
R. T. Smith
Is the scent of apple boughs smoking in the woodstove what I will remember of the Red Delicious I brought down, ashamed
that I could not convince its limbs to render fruit? Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart.
I should have lopped the dead limbs early and watched each branch with a goshawk's eye, patching with medicinal pitch, offering water,
compost and mulch, but I was too enchanted by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture, too callow to believe that death's inevitable
for any living being unloved, untended. What remains is this armload of applewood now feeding the stove's smolder. Splendor
ripens a final time in the firebox, a scarlet harvest headed, by dawn, to embers. Two decades of shade and blossoms - tarts
and cider, bees dazzled by the pollen, spare elegance in ice - but what goes is gone. Smoke is all, through this lesson in winter
regret, I've been given to remember. Smoke, and Red Delicious apples redder than a passing cardinal's crest or cinders.

Neglect is a poem by R.T. Smith. This poem’s title is what caught my eye. I was interested to see what it was about. When I started reading the poem I was able to relate the different fruits to people the way the different fruits are handled to the way people treat one another. If one is neglected he will eventually feel worthless and forgotten. The line, “Too much neglect will do that, skew the sap’s passage, blacken leaves, dry the bark and heart” was a terrific piece of imagery that made the reader identify with the apple tree. This one stanza creates a feeling of lost hope, something that should have been taken care of but since there was neglect it grew to be twisted and black, hard and unforgiving. No longer would the tree create a delicious fruit. It could only be used as firewood now. This particular part reminds me of the neglect of a child. If a child is neglected he will learn to trust no one, to become hard and dark in order to protect himself.
After Us
Connie Wanek
I don't know if we're in the beginning
or in the final stage.
 -- Tomas Tranströmer
Rain is falling through the roof.
And all that prospered under the sun,
the books that opened in the morning
and closed at night, and all day
turned their pages to the light;
the sketches of boats and strong forearms
and clever faces, and of fields
and barns, and of a bowl of eggs,
and lying across the piano
the silver stick of a flute; everything
invented and imagined,
everything whispered and sung,
all silenced by cold rain.
The sky is the color of gravestones.
The rain tastes like salt, and rises
in the streets like a ruinous tide.
We spoke of millions, of billions of years.
We talked and talked.
Then a drop of rain fell
into the sound hole of the guitar, another
onto the unmade bed. And after us,
the rain will cease or it will go on falling,
even upon itself.

This poem by Connie Wanek is called “After Us.” It is a poem about the rain. The way that it helps living things and the way it silences all other sounds. It speaks of the way the rain keeps everyone inside until it starts to come inside too. It speaks of the darkness of rain, of the way it will continuously fall no matter what. The rain will not stop. It will keep on moving. Weather it is good or bad it still continues. There is no way to stop it and no way to prevent it. You can only protect yourself, and even after that the rain will still fall.

Some Clouds
Steve Kowit
Now that I've unplugged the phone,
no one can reach me-
At least for this one afternoon
they will have to get by without my advice
or opinion.
Now nobody else is going to call
& ask in a tentative voice
if I haven't yet heard that she's dead,
that woman I once loved-
nothing but ashes scattered over a city
that barely itself any longer exists.
Yes, thank you, I've heard.
It had been too lovely a morning.
That in itself should h
ave warned me.
The sun lit up the tangerines
& the blazing poinsettias
like so many candles.
For one afternoon they will have to forgive me.
I am busy watching things happen again
that happened a long time ago.
as I lean back in Josephine's lawnchair
under a sky of incredible blue,
broken - if that is the word for it - 
by a few billowing clouds,
all white & unspeakably lovely,
drifting out of one nothingness into another.

This poem is called ”Some Clouds” by Steve Kowit. It is about a man who has lost someone that he loves very much. This poem demonstrates loneliness and hurt. The man does not want people to call him now. He does not want to talk about it. He wants to be left alone in the lawn chairs. He wants to be left alone to look at the clouds. The piece of imagery of the clouds represents peace. This peace is to be shared with the dead. There must some sort of grounding. This man’s ground is the sky.