Poetry Precis 6- "Neglect" by R.T. Smith

In the poem "Neglect" by R.T.  Smith, Smith writes in an emotional tone as he uses imagery and a metaphor to tell a story and convey the hardships of loss. The speaker connects his experience of losing an apple tree and the aftermath of his experience to the regret and guilt humans go through when they consider their mistakes and regrets after losing a loved one. Upset because the apple tree that he neglected is now gone, the speaker uses imagery by asking if what he will remember will be "the scent of apple boughs smoking in the wood stove" and then continues with his regrets saying " I should have lopped the dead limbs early." Through the speaker's thoughts, he describes the process of coping; we have positive memories but we also think of what we did wrong to whatever we lost.  Instead of facing what has happened, the speaker is depressed as he or she continues to blame him or herself saying "I should have" this and that, something that we tend to do when tragedies of loss occur. The speaker says " but I was too enchanted by pear saplings, flowers and the pasture, too callow to believe that death's inevitable for any living being unloved, untended" showing how we become distracted by things in life and then, when someone or something that we once invested in is taken away from us, it is as if we cannot believe that it is really possible that they are gone. Through imagery and the overall metaphor of the tree being a lost loved one, the speaker is able to communicate the struggles that loss bring about and the difficulty of finding a way to cope with the harshness of it.