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This poem is taken from PN Review 37, Volume 10 Number 5, March - April 1984.

Poems Robert B. Shaw

ACCLIMATIZING

A blue spruce, transplanted,
may not remain true blue;
hydrangea petals, litmus-like,
will vary in their hue

from here, of sky at sunset
to there, of sky at noon.
Flower and fir grow color-fast
by slow turns until strewn,

besting attention's bid to span
each deepening tinge of change
until they've worn unwelcome out
in soil they came to strange.

They mock at man uprooted.
Could acid soil or base
lend him the local tincture, thus
...


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