put that in aspic
put it in amber
as the long gold
of a winter afternoon
draws on my heart
and the cravings start
to preserve that almost-there
feeling, like where
you dragged your lips
down my shoulder
or the nostalgic
sense of a new
room
in a rented flat
as sun slants
across clean paintwork
dust-motes dance
I would
tear apart
shred the world
just to
keep this
butterfly-bright moment
pinned
to my taskbar
like yearning, like wanting, like chance
but the light just
slips
through my hands
Are we all
reeling from
entry wounds making us
cruel and childish
under
tyrannical sunlight
revealing harsh
vulnerable
undergrowth
almost no one knows
how to enfold
the gum-studded, ragged blossom scrub
without smothering
in the cognitive dissonance
of landscape
as I fumble funeral tissues
prop open the doors
and let it all flood in
the ugly bits, the bush smell,
death and decay
awful, is it snakes
or something putrid
in the corners and car parks where
care factors set to
magnificent complacency
hold the indifference of
poisoned fruit in a possum cage
between the top of clouds and
the lid of the sky
sunlight breathes shallow and sits
in thin air
her warm fingers edged with
cold wind
the weight of majestic rays
higher than mountains, above fields
alone, over hidden cities of busy lives,
the mess and rush of love and hate, real life
up here
not really anywhere,
significant
temporary
ripped only by metal wings or feathered flight
mostly, a lonely nowhere
except
hovering in that secret blue place
I ache and stretch tendrils of tenderness,
could I reach?
everywhere
my yearning
feels like atmosphere
The inspiration for this came in part from a poem by Frank Hubeny which conjured the idea of the sun above the clouds having its own little game up there.
I sat on this for a month because I was planning to submit it to a journal callout for ‘immigrant poems’ — it speaks to my experience as an expat/person out of place/away from home. But then I got busy and missed the deadline, oops.
Photo: Idella Maeland on Unsplash
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