The James Hearst Digital Archive

Home » Poetry » Small Thorns

Small Thorns

Text of Poem

The odor from garbage my neighbor
burns in a trash barrel corrupts
the fresh breath of morning and
I find the curtain of silence easily
torn at night by a barking dog, and 
my taste runs to birdsong early
Sunday morning rather than the blasts
from a neighbor’s lawn mower and
I have never subscribed to the steel
fences built to keep kids from
homesteading vacant lots. But we
neighbors know we must bear with
each other for it is the small thorns
that prick tempers and lame the feet
of good will. Yet no one, I repeat,
no one gives us directions of how
to change things as they are.

First Line
The odor from garbage my neighbor
Original Pub Location
Original Publication Date
1979
Original Citation
Wormwood Review 19 (1979) 33.
Complete Poems
390
Word Count
111
Poetic Form
open
Themes
Twitter Quote
my taste runs to birdsong early / Sunday morning rather than the blasts / from a neighbor’s lawn mower