Delusions
Flaxen and floating I saw myself, soft
as gossamer, blown in intricate
circles like a dusky moth, aloft,
winged and free-wheeling in the air.
Toes, elfin and pointed, slender arms
encircling the sky, graceful as branches,
long, willowy and charmed -
catching the world in my hands.
Mimic of my sister: in pink kid shoes
and puff white tutu, she was a silken
creature I had to catch, I could not lose,
yet I was a twirling minstrel next to her.
In bright and ragged colours, just a clown;
the spiky thistle seedpod to her soft thistledown.
From Agamemnon's Poppies, Black Pepper, 2003. (First published in Island)
Awakening
World swamped by blueness of sea and sky,
your breath, wind-cooled, eddied at my mouth,
your eyes above me were bursts of indigo dye,
like erupting spinnakers or birds flying south.
Skin-smooth, snail-soft, your lips left trails,
anemone-mouth insistent as a child's,
messages drowned on my body like sea tales;
gentling my flesh, you whispered and beguiled.
Sky floated above like an open umbrella,
we were lost there in that limbo of blue,
the wind breathed out the word forever
and at the heart of it there was only you.
We hovered, bodies anchored to warm stone,
spirits chasing sky and air; each alone.
From Agamemnon's Poppies, Black Pepper, 2003. (First
published in Island)
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