MORELLE SMITH
By the Danube, Novi Sad
The city's quiet in the early morning.
Buses glide along at intervals, like ice skaters,
nothing to slow them down.
On the walkway by the river
(mighty Danube keep us safe from danger)
a jogger passes me, and a woman
on the path ahead of me
turns round, walks back the other way.
Further on, a wedge of willow trees
separates the pathway from the river
(mighty Danube, grant safe passage
to our travellers on your waters)
and a slow bird rises up above the foliage,
its black and grey wings carry it to a tall tree
which it circles round, then
heads back to where it came from,
heron dropping down behind
the grey-green willow trees.
I turn around as well
and take a different route to home.
I see a lemon and beige patterned shell
beneath my feet – just in time
before I step on it.
I pick the snail up from the road,
and place it on the earth among the bushes
for a path where humans walk
is not the best location for a snail highway.
Then, underneath Slobode Most flyover,
I reach the pink brick walkways of the park,
cross over to the high-rises and rustling poplars
of my home on Šekspirova.
(Mighty Danube, Protector of insomniacs,
and the woman who turned round,
the wheeling heron, and the errant snail.)
Morelle Smith studied English and French Literature at Edinburgh University (a long time ago); writing and travelling have been the main themes in her life. She has had various jobs, many of them involving teaching adults – subjects have included French, English as a Second Language and Creative Writing. She has also been an aid worker in Albania.
These days Morelle focuses mainly on writing – poetry, travel articles, fiction and translation – and she has had various poems, stories, articles and books published. You can find more of Morelle's poems on these websites: Scottish PEN, mediterranean poetry and Ellen And Jim Have A Blog, Two. Her poems have been published in magazines such as Poetry Scotland, Poetry Cornwall, Poetry Monthly, New Writing Scotland, The Salmon, Crannog, and Chapman, and in anthologies such as Scottish Literature in the 20th Century and Anthology of Scottish Women Poets. Some of her poems have been translated into French, Albanian, Romanian and Bulgarian. Morelle's blog on writing and travel is rivertrain.