Topic Summaries

I can’t hear the barista

over the coffee machine.

Spoons slam, steam rises.

I catch the eye of a man

sitting in the corner

of the cafe reading alone

about trees which is, incidentally,

all I can think about

since returning.

Last week I sat alone

on a stump, deep in Zelandia forest

with sun-syrupped Kauri trees

and brazen Tui birds with white tufts

and yellow and black beaks.

They landed by my feet, blaring so loudly

I had to turn off my hearing aids.

When all sound disappeared, I was tuned

into a silence that was not an absence.

As I switched sound on again,

silence collapsed.

The forest spat all the birds back,

and I was jealous—

the earthy Kauri trees, their endless

brown and green trunks of sturdiness.

I wondered what the trees would say about us?

What books would they write if they had to cut us down?

Later, stumbling from the forest I listened

to a young Maori woman.

She could tell which bird chirped,

a skill she learned from her grandfather

who said with birds you’re never lonely.

In that moment I felt sorry

for any grey tree in London,

for the family they don’t have,

the Gods they can’t hold