Nature Poetry Competition Winner
Anton in Summer
Natalie Susak
In class I learn the word for summer: ljeto. This summer: ljetos. This summer figs fall from trees at the beach where we swim with your cousins.
Anton is wrestling the Hungarian vizsla unleashed in clear waters. They are diving and somersaulting, the heat too much for soft animals like them.
How can I imagine Anton a soldier? Anton so boyish even now sun-baking in the bay licking icecream from salt-encrusted fingers,
Anton with his boy-band good looks and his summer smile, Anton who could never, never hold a gun.
Before the war, you told him to plant tomatoes. You left and said when you came back you wanted tomatoes. He bought summer sweet golds.
When we visit he hands us red globes so small & sun-warmed, so ripe & fragrant.
Your tomatoes waited thirty years, stalks twisting together, growing old.
You didn’t see how he tilled hot earth, sowed seeds. How he stayed by their side watered shoots, young green tender as a girl’s wrist.
As I sit across the ocean of kitchen table I know there is a word, there is a word for this.
Natalie Susak is a poet from Sydney, Australia. She has earned a BA (Honours) in English and a MA Creative Writing from the University of Sydney. She received the 2025 Varuna Poetry Flagship Fellowship. Her work has appeared in Cordite, Island, The University of Sydney Anthology, AVENUE, and Free the Verse.
