BN Oakman, formerly an academic economist, has published many poems in journals and magazines in Australia, the UK and the USA and two full length collections, In Defence of Hawaiian Shirts (IP 2010) and Second Thoughts (IP 2014) plus two chapbooks. In 2016 the distinguished Australian actor John Flaus recorded 25 of his poems for a CD titled 'What did I know?' Bruce was a Pushcart Prize nominee in 2015. www.bnoakman.com.

BN Oakman

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Lemons

Any poem I write, never mind how brief,
seems always to need weeks to complete.
Recently I was tempted towards a belief
I'd finished a poem in less than five days.

Then I read of lemon trees soon to die,
how they bring forth crops so weighty
their limbs strain and splinter and split
and the earth around their trunks is soon
strewn thick with the rotting fruits of
such profligacy in the throes of death.

I looked once again at the poem and was
heartened to find several flaws hitherto
disregarded - nagging infelicities likely
to require weeks of work to put right.