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.
