The Kent & Sussex Poetry Society

This poem, by Bob Spencer, a local poet and farmer, was selected for our Folio #73 in 2019.

The Sacred Tree Says You Are Now A Bird That Doesn't Hate Blue

You never seemed to know
where you were from.
Onetime,
I thought goose green
where the swings were.
Perhaps
the cemetery hill
where we laughed
ten times each week.

Now and then
where you are now
speaks to me.
It says you won't be anywhere
because anywhere
is always blue.
You hated blue.

I walked
into this innocent field
for an opinion.
It also said that
you're not anywhere,
that your kisses have melted away.
Chocolate in the sun.
Aches in the bath.

I wondered
if you were in the sacred tree,
naked now, shorn
of its keys and leaves.
Not amongst my brittle bones
It barked.
She is flown to the sun,
the elephants.
And others.

I looked to the skies,
your path to the sun
and rejoiced that blue
could no longer
be a source
of your displeasure.