"Pocket of Wings"
I spend a day with buttercups, lay
a blanket amongst a body of wings
hoping the dust of angels will settle
on the skin of a woman asking.
A swallow sits on a round stone.
She claws at its redness.
She could puncture a hole through yellow
and my chest if she chooses. A stolen
smile turns corners at her beak. She
guzzles it down with a thin, dried worm
under this sun-bleach that withers me
just as quickly. I have walked
across this field dressed in her feathers,
laughed into buttercups and drank
from their throat of stars while she
slept in the knotted alder. I realise
a girl and a woman separate
somewhere on this hillside, in this field.
Perhaps a decade of words pass
when I take a pocket of flowers? Perhaps
there are no remnants, no more angels
sweetly dipped through brush
and honeysuckle, no more dragon-
flamed heather, or lantern giants.
A swallow streaks the sky with sunset
causing buttercups to close. Beads
glitter my feet, warm, from the thorn
of her beak. She tells the girl to go home.
EV Books (Lia)
|
|
