
Two Poems
Afterlight
Pitch dark. Span of six long years stretched taut
on bottom bunk, Briony wrestling thin, watery
dreams above my head. Astir under my bedspread,
I keep the world that keeps on turning, turning.
Turn on the nightlight I’d said, but Mum forgot,
and it’s too late now, she won’t come. No hum
from the next room, a silent league of landing
in between. How long have I been here? The ear
grows old conducting the alien house at night:
two howling genies destined to blister
in the radiator, one parakeet’s sawdust shiftings
three paces from my bed. In three sleeps
I’ll break my vigil and wake to find him dead.
For now, though, jumble sale Barbie’s siren songs
and closet Furby’s loveless wheeze depend
upon me: vaulted god, the warden of electricity.
Sati
The succulent on the windowsill sits with itself
all day long—no recourse, no complaint. Stilled
in whichever energies the elements throw its way.
The present: inquiring light, or the lucid, citrus
eyes of Elsa’s cat. Fine-spun gildings, diamantine
jewels. Each meaty tongue-leaf shaped like a shoe.
Some masters say focus is forgetting; they call it
flow. Others practice a special kind of remembering—
the mind circling back to kinship with the whole.
Me, aged five, learning to tie shoelaces in the garden.
Beside the heady azalea bush in Velcro sandals,
glazed with banana sunscreen. I held rough twine
around a jam jar, and umpteen tentatives deflecting
like dandelion seeds. Sitting with the body is hard.