Poems, Autumn 2019

Body of Water

Rowan berries

and most of the moon,

awash with layers

of river-rush -

notes of seventeen or so

clean pitches -

cordial,

reminiscent

of glass

and quenched thirst.

Stem thick as

stick,

autumnal fruit

eager

as the old tree

growing sideways -

acrobatic,

spreading its branches

like a shade of mould.

You could wear the

reeds like ribbons

in your hair -

so thick and green

and begging to be picked.

You get the sense that

this water connects

glacier to swamp

in the same way that

this arm is an extension

of unwritten will

poured down rock

and gathering at the navel,

down at which

with my ancestors

I gaze.

__________________________

 

As if I Am a Map

As if I am a map

I am to track

each decline and ascent,

each pothole, plain and forest,

each groove where foxes sleep

and

bats claim ballrooms of sky.

As if I were not human

I am told to find patterns

as if it is simple,

as if it is cold as bone.

Chants move me,

such as,

it is better with the windows open

it is lighter when the moon is here

the hardest wood succumbs to rot

and beetle-shells make dye

morning and dusk are but shades

a rose speaks the violence of the heart

and when you crunch a stick

you must pray with your feet.

As if there were such a thing

as favours

and investment through planting,

I must present

all manners of evidence

all routes to existence -

the tundra

the mire

and the depth.

__________________________

Cobwebs

Cobwebs hang like cotton tails,

the farmer's son cries

with no sense of scale –

this could be war.

Reeds planted headstrong

with their banana-skin insides

like another kind of cotton

a wetter kind, of sugar.

A young girl

threads her fingers through mine

and leads me

down this path

so familiar

it could be a dream

and the air inside becomes the sky

just as grey and bright

and open.

__________________________

Salvage

Light gives way to storms,

the kitchen abuzz

with wholesome distractions.

The needle pierces the eye

and sews us conscious.

Ink becomes a smudge of nuisance

- antique blot on thumb.

We curate starvation

as if it alone will feed us

and become incrementally

more barbaric, and serene.

Less and less

I see the world

as an open picture.

I know now

it is all reflection.

What is real -

I ask daily, and over, and over.

I have friends who encircle

my patch of grass

and sometimes we have a picnic.

The road becomes

oh so lucid

in the dream in the cavity in the earth.

(Rail tracks become ski slopes become hill).

When I'm living I am not thinking.

How to live with the thinking.

The black spot

plunges down -

a dying star,

a parachute.

__________________________

You Caught Me at Breakfast

The last flight of a wasp

slow as jam

falling off a spoon.

Light inside becomes butter

and there is a smear of rainbow,

a film of cloud.

A door slams -

the reverberation,

its solid clang,

is how I imagine

the realest

and most tangible thought.

__________________________

 

I Could Disappear

The more I explore

the more I crumble

becoming as thin as spider legs

at the seams -

unmoored as I am

from the dinner table

so that I float like a satellite

in orbit

like a dancing teapot

capturing the glint of the chandelier

on its way out.

__________________________

Kiwi

I let my tongue roll

over kiwi and

words slither off

like the long vowels

I once drew out

under morning sheets.

How I recount

those devastations now

from my sexless tower

of river rocks

as big as plates

and kingdoms.