Share This Poem: “After Church,” by Ron Smith.
BROAD STREET invites you to enjoy this poem from our “Maps & Legends” issue. It’s presented here as a broadside to download and print out — or you can scroll past and read the whole poem in plain text (though you’ll miss out on special indentations, alas).
After Church
Byrd Park, warm November
Little trees by the road: candleflames . . .
and the ducks on the pond a net
that flings itself white and black, veering
and skidding finally onto
the sky . . .
The fishermen cast,
the turtles sun in the eternal sun.
Every squirrel has an acorn in its mouth.
A child is chasing a chicken . . .
And, oh, that tree! apple-green-incandescent!
giant trunk twisting like a waterspout!
The big-leafed fellow beside him runs in yellow fire
down to the scummy canal . . .
So why is the red maple
bright yellow, the Japanese maple a dapple
of feathery pink, red, green?
God knows, God knows . . . The maidenhair tree
hasn’t turned yet (Gingko biloba)
and doesn’t stink today
the way it did three weeks ago.
Sweet gum’s hung like Christmas
with thousands of spiked balls . . .
The maples light all the shadows.
Cucumber magnolia, fifteen feet around — bare,
its suckers harping the breeze.
Bare river birch, your tiny twigs dendrite the blue,
don’t they? Let’s say so.
Look!
The Authorities have switched on
the cascade! And its
double rainbow! God
will not destroy us today
by water.
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Ron Smith recently served as the Poet Laureate of Virginia, and he is the Writer-in-Residence at St. Christopher’s School in Richmond.
His books are Running Again in Hollywood Cemetery, Moon Road, Its Ghostly Workshop, and The Humility of the Brutes.
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