from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Friday 27 June 2014

infinitesima

I find myself writing a long poem again – this happens infrequently. Here's a sneak preview for you (first draft) of one of the several sections:

~

Midsummer. The month pours itself through the eye
of the year and we follow in our wake of days.
In the courtyard the weight of blossom has brought
the purple hebe to its knees. The weight of rain.
              A family of tits chatters on the ox-eye daisies
and the resident magpies have stripped every cherry
ripe or not from my new ‘Sweetheart’ tree. They –
the magpies – swoop like stormtroopers at the woodpecker
on the feeder, steal all my soft fruit, loiter on the gutter
by the great tits’ nest to pick off the hatchlings.
                                                                                   And yet
I stoop to lift this one my heart contracting at its
useless legs
its spread-eagled flapping at the side of the lane –
lift it into green – what else can I do? We’re all in this together.

Each of the ten thousand things does what’s in its nature
to do. We’re all in this together – tree rain midge magpie snail.
The earth turns on its axis another year and another year.


© Roselle Angwin

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