When I Heard The Trees Speak
I turned to see your face
and it was still.
So, to be certain, I took
your hand and whispered,
‘Do you hear that?’
Blankly, you answered, ‘What?’,
finding in the daily sounds of these woods –
the wind among high branches,
crushed leaves beneath our feet –
nothing worth noticing or speaking of.
I stood there, silent,
and my heart leapt hard
under my ribs, rushing my blood about.
I touched my fingers to the closest bark
and felt, below the crust,
the tendons shift, the tongue
rising and falling with the words.
Kitty Coles‘ poems have been widely published in magazines and anthologies. She was one of the two winners of the Indigo Dreams Pamphlet Prize 2016 and her debut pamphlet, Seal Wife, was published in 2017. www.kittyrcoles.com