-
yma nown bleyth dhymm
i will stop my mouth
with poems, eat through
continents and centuries
shovelling hungry words
like a dog
hunkered over scrapings
so when the walls are too close
to speak this awkward now
words like broken teeth
and shards of poems
will fall from my mouth impersonal,
fragments of snow and bone
and flowers from another’s hill –
i will leave them there
raw on the quiet table
amongst the rooting basil
and afternoon light
to be rearranged by others
inoffensive palatable
polite.outside the sky is blue infinite
vast. black veined butterflies
as big as my outstretched hands
swoon sun-soothed among
towering stems of plectranthus.
honey warm and silent
i know my fill
taste of colours lingering
on my tongue.
Todays Napowrimo prompt asks us “to engage with different languages and cultures through the lens of proverbs and idiomatic phrases.” The Cornish title yma nown bleyth dhymm translates as I’ve got the hunger of a wolf.
-
under the weather
sunbird against the window
this morning first light
must have come in through
the new opened door
purring wings against the glassquicker than the cat
i cover her in hands
still the beating wings
feel her long beak find rest
between fingers
outside above the valley
i slowly release her
body no bigger than my thumb
she perches on the edge
of cupped hands –
turns that slate grey head
to look at me
a moment
fliestoday there will be no sun
to catch her quick iridescence
just the low dry clouds
trapping birdsong. -
gifts
sometimes i went with my mother to work
night duty at the old-age home in town
trailing quiet shadow behind her
on the evening round
out to the rooms and through frail care.there was a woman there
i don’t know her name,
they were all mr and mrs somebody
to a seven year old me,
she was insubstantial
not much more than folds
in her blankets and skin –
but her eyes were alive in that dim quiet room.she called me over to – beckoning
with long wrists long fingers –
folding my child’s hand in her bones.
at ninety she was the oldest person
i had ever seen and she almost scared me
with those cheekbones and eyebrows and
lank hair that she stuck in wisps
behind her ear.she said she made it for me
and lifted her hand revealing
a small piece of paper
not quite bookmark size
twining vines with buds and blooms
shaping letters, spelling my name,
i never knew she knew.i remember, she said,
being your age like it was yesterday –
it still feels the same, she said
meeting my eyes
and for a moment i was not child
and she was not old woman –
we just were.
it is just the body that gets tired, she said
turning those grey eyes toward the drawn curtains
last light of day a gold line across the room.and then she smiled
craggy and almost broken
and patted my hand with
those bone fingers once more,
asked me to remember her
and of course i do.
like it was yesterdayit still feels same
being rendered visible
where we thought we were
unseen. -
36° in the shade
there is a touch of crazy on the wind today
though the air, pushed warm and dry
from an invisible north beyond the mountains
hardly moves at all.
like living on borrowed air the day breathes shallow,
toads have taken the ponds
sitting silent amongst the lilly pads
their measured breath rippling the water
while my forest frog skin roots for moisture
burrowing thirsty feet in damp soil.
tomorrow it will rain. -
warm evenings in april
it all belongs to the sky
the rush of ocean
and shadow horizon,
it all belongs to darkness of night
and the stars that lean forward
touching skin with light
older than thought,
listening among the cicadas
for the sound of our breath. -
chthōn
it is the simplest thing
to swallow the earth
small seeds
yield green leaves
bright against rich soil –
handfuls of greens fresh chopped
with sharp garlic and moistened with olive oil
spooned generous
onto pasta new rolled and
hung on the elder staff to dry.
it is the simplest thing
to eat the earth
knowing the mud of these bones
that will be earth eaten too. -
#15
eventually
the streptocarpus
will fall its sky petals
to the quiet water below
like the weight
of all that beauty
in the world
becomes just too heavy
to hold. -
poet
i was nearly twenty
before i met anyone
who lived by words alone,
whose face shone
with the taste of them spoken
in small rooms of listeners,
who lived light in this world –
half of him hunting
and gleaning the shadow world
for words that
could hold this falling apart.
cancer took him young too.in my mind
he still walks on upper campus,
his feet measuring
rhythm and line,
light of another mountain
full on his face. -
vespers
evening finds me
walking gate to gate to door –
checking ties and bolts
closing porcupine from greens
and genet from fowl.
there is no sound but my breath
and the crunch of dry leaves underfoot,
sometimes goats quick chewing on hay.
i don’t remember
not loving here –
even before i came.
even before i found myself
on my knees in this earth.
inside i close quiet windows
on a rising chill
that drifts up from the valley.
seems night is gathering
silence and stars –
waiting for the wood owl
to speak moonlight
to the sky. -
gathering our storm
we summoned the change wind
and it came
like a slow salt beast, barnacle-skinned
we summoned the change wind
shaping our siren prayers – luminous, winged
until our skin remembered the taste of rain
we summoned the change wind
and it came.A triolet for the Day 12 Napowrimo prompt to be found here