and then there are other days

Just to counter yesterday's writing, here's one of my poems from Looking For Icarus (bluechrome 2005; hopefully to be reissued by IDP).

This one won a small prize somewhere or other.

Against the Ice

Contra el agua, diás de fuego  Paz

 

There are mornings when you wonder

how anything ever turns out right -

 

when we’re all refugees trudging scorched soil

without hope; without anything;

 

yet in the face of all odds

snowdrops still break iceblack soil

 

swollen plums blush in the August sun

despite pollution, genetics and sprays

 

and there are insects who still know

what pollen to merge with which.

 

 

Then there are evenings when out of the stillness

a huge wind rises to stride through the leaves

 

and sets fat drops of rain glistening

like fairy-lights amongst the mulberries;

 

And times when the voice of a blackbird

breaks you open

 

and you go out into everything, your heart

on fire like a sunflower in a landscape

 

that ripples with song, with something

that cannot be suppressed.

 

 

 

- Roselle Angwin