Poems by Helen Finney

Make Like a Tree


The trees are livid. They leer
and fume and shudder under the hue of the sky,
they’ve heard the talk, the seas have been gloating.
The Blue Planet.
The Pale Blue Dot.
The plants are beside themselves with rage.
What about us? Their jealousy simmers,
where would you be without our shade,
without our breath of fresh air? Water
may be the stuff of life but it’s us that keep your lungs alive.
Jaded, they blink their green-eyed envy, see red
and leave their leaves behind. They sulk for months
till they tire of the lack of attention,
then flush themselves back into the limelight
with a minted display of fresh green.

Green

The thickness of it slithers through the jungle,
solid, deep and moist
or delicately grips to high mountain rocks,
growing at the pace of continental drift.
The dewy fullness of it fills the desert
when the rains finally arrive
and the fields are filled with its swaying mass,
carpeting the countryside.
The sliced sharpness of it
is dropped with ice into a measure of gin
and the neon hurt of its garish words
lighting up downtown.
The tempting fruit of its succulent bite
given by the lure of a snake
or the foreverness of its needled trees
who never lose their pride.
But the irony of the soldiers
whose guns are the colour of life.

About the Poet:

Helen spent most of her adult life living and working as a fine artist in Swansea, South Wales in the UK. However, a move to Thailand just before the pandemic saw a major shift in her concentration towards writing and poetry. She has been published several times (Ink, Sweat & Tears, Morecambe Poetry Festival Anthology, Merthyr–They Wrote, Village Voices, Dreich Mag) and recently released her third poetry collection.