Roy Herndon Smith
Outside my window,
a curved mess of a plane tree,
sparsely leaved branches
partly obscuring
the hard-edged, straight, clean lines of
a street light and sign
of wordless commands—
the yellow background, Warning!
Red octagon, Stop!
Black arrow, Ahead!
The whole, Not now! No crash of
hard-edged, clean-lined cars!
No mass of bloody,
broken bodies! Remember
children, who, lost in
the messes and curves
of abundant life, don’t know
how sparse the days are.
dust 