3 poems by Antony Di Nardo

Among the Trees
	What kind of times are these
	when a conversation about trees
	is almost a crime
	because it implies silence
	about so many atrocities.
			—Bertolt Brecht

You add a teaspoon of honey, 
amber and gold, to the headlines you read 
and stir until you have an opinion

You pick sides 
like I pick a trail through the woods 
where I live on the same side as the trees

apples and cherries, rivers of larches, 
maples and hemlocks, 
woodlands for keeping things quiet 

You know the smell of concrete, of rubble 
and blood, rebar and death, the stench 
of bullets and blades

You’ve been to Beirut and back to the past, 
back to Aleppo and the wailing of walls, 
back to the future that has come and has gone

You pick sides like I pick the colours of autumn, 
amber and gold, the scarlet of maple, 
ruby and red like the blood in our veins 

You pick sides—green apples or cherries, 
half empty or full, your left from your right, 
how we should live and who we let die—

as I step into the woods 
where the trees are at peace 
and I walk among them




 
Still Life on Blue Parchment

The cracked bell of a yellow pepper 
lay scooped and exposed on the counter
the butcher block pitted with innards

I do not care for peppers but I have sufficient 
empathy to suffer quietly for any metaphor
that prompts the image of an open wound

I would not care to have my guts spill out 
like that, the blade of an empire striking
down the innocent going about

their business in the kitchen, getting dinner
ready, a ratatouille, say, spoiled by the rattle
of gunfire coming through the door





 
Stripped 

I’ve been to hell and back 
on my handheld screens. 
I’ve stepped on bodies turned 
to rubble, concrete, boots 

and bullets, turned a corner 
and faced destruction, the beast 
on the streets the worst 
I’ve seen. Is it rude to point 

to flaws in the fabric?
Tears in the collar 
that cinches the neck?
Some people wear down 

quicker than others.
I’ve seen it with my own 
how far from home 
some people get before 

even the rain doesn’t belong 
to them anymore. 
They lose their hearts. 
They’re forced to live 

the way they’ll die, stripped 
to bits and bad ideas 
strewn like body parts, 
wars across the screens.

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Antony Di Nardo is an award-winning poet and editor. Born in Montreal, he has a post-graduate degree in English from the University of Toronto and began his writing career as a journalist, publishing and editing a small-town weekly. Forget-Sadness-Grass is his sixth collection and was a CBC Books’ poetry pick for Fall 2022. His previous book, Through Yonder Window Breaks, won the inaugural Don Gutteridge Poetry Prize. His work has been translated into several languages and appears widely in journals and anthologies. He divides his time between Sutton, Quebec and Cobourg, Ontario.

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