SUMMER DARES NOT

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A poetry mini-collection compiled through an ecofeminist lens, exploring interdependencies between myth and truth, human and other, modernity and fulfillment

Agnes

Agnes flowed like

Deep violet currents

Through the rocky tapestry

Of this seashore town

Appearing

Across ages

From wrinkle to wrinkle

A golden spectre

To haunt a heritage.

When salted winds lay settled

And pale skies reigned clear

You could see her

Tracing the shoreline

Softening its bite

On her return to

Familiar stone

Fresh eyes

With borrowed nostalgia.

She surfaced

Every now and then

Had a knack for

Venturing

The truth of things

Ladies of the village in turn

Feared her half-pitying gaze

And the monsters she weaved

In their beds and cradles.

Her lovers never once

Looked upon the same face

But in equal felt

Love’s blistering tide

Swirl in their veins

Though they never

Could quite detail

The subject for that

Drowning desire.

She’d disappear with the moon

Retreat into a different

Kind of truth

The Lady of the Rocks

Though they would

Never admit it

Men pray to Agnes

For safe passage

On petulant seas.

Sometimes

In the deepest indigo night

As crackling waves

Toss and turn

A figure is seen

At the mouth

Of a cliff-side cave

A bone-dry

Eye of the storm.

The cave

Opens up

Along the tarnished coast

Appearing to many as

An abyss

A gravitational reckoning.

To some

A beacon home

An earthen, siren song.

Whale song

My breath becomes performance, as much as weakness

If it wasn’t impulse, do you think I would surface?

Not even to feel the warm rays of sunlight, to dance and jump

Would I risk these shallow waters, and the malice that floats upon it

I know some of you see goodness in the drifters, respectful gapes

That you love to plant on their tiny, burdened faces

Does respect come in tracking swarms of clicks and flashes?

The question is open because I truly have not decided

But images and arrows fire from the same miniscule motion

And feed the same gluttonous beast

Respect is reciprocity, that they seem to have forgotten

Cosmic, peaceful waters that we have known for millions of years

Poisoned and barren under their genius vision

A site of unspeakable suffering and tragedy

Lessened only when their war machine captured our song

And decided it had value, cut us open and we bleed the same warmth

But they no longer recognise death

They are the first we have seen to crave entropy

And delusion, challenging the intelligence of this world

Billions of years of creative expansion

A sick joke that it has culminated in them

Still, this world will never stop fighting for life

And I have a feeling that mistakes will be put right

In sum, my feelings spill indecipherably  

When I sense their circus overhead

But for the most part, I must say that I pity them.

Do you feel that too?

Stalled summer

Old people shouldn’t drive

You said as we zoomed by

An anxious senior

It’s shameful any of us

Are driving at all, mind

Imagine functioning

Public transport

What a feeling, though

Gliding by in a morning glow

Imagine ancient Romans

In a Fiat 500

At a service stop

We got fries and plant-based meat

When we got

Back on the road

We discovered that you

Adore the sun

And I adore what the sun touches

-

The city’s air makes my chest tighten.

A heroin user shouts at me,

As I stand in line at Planet Organic

What good will come of any of this?

We wonder

Let’s grab a drink

And watch the synchronised swimming

I wonder which countries will win

You cry as medals are handed out

You say turn on the news, but I can’t

See

Children die

At the hands of men

A common denominator

I might get my nails done

For my birthday

I want to paint pottery and swim

Is solitary community

A contradiction, you ask?

What we long for

Is oddly simple

-

Summer took its time

It doesn’t feel the same

As before

The heat

Panics me now

A little

You say I’ll always have

Summer blood.

Selfie

One day in the open

Vanity took hold

Pen and page to one side

My own reflection

Front and centre.

So the wind hassled me

In a knock swept my poems

Up and up

I found them

Bent around tree trunks

Open-palmed, taut or

Melting as ripples in the lake

Ink transcending to a new form.

So I took the point

And wrote this poem.

Hekla

Hekla waits

With the patience or cunning of the forty-eight percent

The gateway to hell

Is a woman sleeping

And men stand

Naïvely on the remnants of her dormant power.

They probe

Pray, interrogate, dissect, dismember

The intentions

Of her buried heart

In inconsequential whisper

Timid and weak amidst an ancient, bellowing roar.

Aged tears

In sweet irony stain the battered hillside

And forecast a prophecy

Abstruse as virtue

Of the schismatic day

That Hekla unfurls in rebellion and sacrilege.  

She will stir

And crack her bones against her dewy moss-grown skin.

Twist and coil

Towards a darkening sky

Her witch’s hair

Spiralling free in a feverish, flaring delight.

As she rises

The furrowed earth around her will rumble and bow

Awaiting in humility

The restoration

Of a violent peace

The native justice of the land of ice and fire.

-

Listen.

To the murmur beneath your feet.

Her awakening draws closer and closer.

Your world will fall on a woman’s whim. You may find it was never there at all.

Sister Serpentine

hush

my sisters

wait for that

evenfall hour

when Gaia

blinds eyes

and mortal order

unwrites itself

twinkling in

celestial nectar

and laced

in nightingale lay

the hour falls

now

i’ll meet you

where melted

stars lap at skin

and emerald tears

press glass lips

to gift a truth

wrapped

in oyster bone

that will weave

tides like ivy

on spine

love

is ours

while the moon

trickles starlight

on our palms

and coats

a serpentine

anointment

in the fiery haze

our shadows

are as prophecy

and bones as quills.