This poem is taken from PN Review 92, Volume 19 Number 6, July - August 1993.

Poems

Elizabeth Smither

A VIEW OVER TREES

Buy what you see: if that could be
A tax on land you'd take these trees
And treetops to the balance sheet
And overnight be millionaires
Of green and elegant oversight.

How across a sloping valley floor
That climbs towards a general store
Tastefully hid: only the tiled roof
In flattering tones of pink chimes in
And accidentally completes the mood

In all weathers you are master of.
Like looking on an army on the march
Or simply standing, a wood itself,
In a wood with that bivouacking pose
Before some field is borne upon
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