Tuesday, 8 January 2013

Howqua Poem 1


rainbow trout once jumped here
where the water is black with depth
and female hands, unkempt
fingernails in certain sunlit trysts

bearing pale reflections of other pale bodies,
clutch crumbs of amethyst and jade
and are cupped by the wind’s gnomic graces
as their legs, smooth as polished wood,

tread water – bleeding soot-daubed
trees inch their moribund roots down
in a last-ditch admixture
of ultimate intensity and ultimate fatigue

to silty nooks where crayfish nest –
and all the weeds are flowering
and the infinitesimal rapids
evanesce on the surface of that oblong
pool, eyes of dogs and men fixed
on their shallow point of re-emergence –

now we and not the trout are here
with dirt rutted in our fortune lines –
the rug on which she tries to sleep
laid between two cyprus stumps

on downtrodden tussock, cow pats
stinging nettles, blackberries,
rampant yellow flowers, is blazoned
with indecipherable signs – there is only
us, us in the New Years Eve gloaming.



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