<\/p>\n
These words are roving
\nbirds, returning
\nAfter a spell of wintering
\nIn distant climes
\nTurning, banking,
\nEyes trained
\nOn the last home stretch
\nWings weighted with desire
\nFor a tree, familiar
\nFeet poised to perch
\nOn tremulous twigs
\nSeeking the solace of roosts
\nsundered by memory<\/p>\n
I did not womb you for nine months
\nBut each endless stretch of seconds
\nBetween the blink of your embryo
\nand the beauty of your birth felt long
\nOr longer even, than gestation
\nEach ticking thought-beat, an aeon; <\/p>\n
Even now, I see your conception still
\nSoft sudden moments when the muse entered me
\nAnd seeded you
\nThen it was that I, suddenly pregnant
\nBecame priestess: marrying word to word
\nYou were nebulous then, a skinny sketch of an idea
\nFickle fetus in the forests of my mind<\/p>\n
But I knew you then, poem, I knew you
\nIn the days of your tremulous arrivals
\nI gloated, caught up in the mystery of your coming
\nI fed you fat on rhythmic alliterates and dressed you in verse<\/p>\n
Yours was a difficult labor, child
\nBut disdaining birth pangs, reached for you
\nPitched into paroxysms of painful pleasure
\nI emerged both midwife and mother
\nTangled by your umbilical cord
\nExulting as the blood of your afterbirth soaked my quill
\nAnd overflowed, drop by eloquent drop
\nTo drench these pages
\nWith the reality of your existence<\/p>\n
We do not dance alone
\nOur feet move to the music of memories
\nFragments of here and there
\nAnd this and that
\nWhirl through us in sync
\nSome sieve time gently, placidly innocent
\nLike echoes of a child\u2019s giggle at the fair
\nOr the murmur of waves lapping me and beach sand simultaneously<\/p>\n
Others are virulent claws
\nLike nails on zinc
\nRipping us back to terrible timescapes
\nMoments when we stood of the edge
\nTottering on a 50\/50 chance
\nOf having been or still becoming
\nWhen time\u2019s needle flickered from stay to go<\/p>\n
We are all returnees
\nCarrying these ebbs and high tides
\nAs wreaths to the present
\nBulky pendants, they ring our necks with ghosts
\nOf the almost not that still became<\/p>\n
We do not dance alone
\nOur music arrives filtered
\nfair giggles, beach sand and the rumble of lost ledges
\nShadow our dancing shoes <\/p>\n
Trudging home in the juvenile dusk
\nTrapped in the tangled threads of time turned backward
\nThe glare of streetlamps sting
\nmy eyes. It is night when it should still
\nhave been daylight. I blink and squint
\nto no avail. Nothing can lift the pall that has settled
\nSuddenly over the sky
\nLike a blanket sprawled
\nOver an unsuspecting face <\/p>\n
This must be how an albino feels
\nIn the sudden embrace of blight lights
\nOnly now, it is the dark
\nIt suffocates me with its brightness
\nThe red glare car taillights
\nCrawling up the street
\nSeem like evil eyes mocking me
\nLike the clock that now lies
\nAnd the day that dies before its time
\nBuried by the artifice
\nOf a manufactured night<\/p>\n
Trust not the sugared promise
\nOf the market woman\u2019s mangoes
\nTheir hue is fair; primly they perch on the tray
\nBut when you see the flash of fruity flavors
\nDraped alluringly in mellow yellow
\nKnow: their winks hoodwink the unwary<\/p>\n
They have gone to a place where no fruit should go Dear Gentle goddess of the heights <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Words in Flight These words are roving birds, returning After a spell of wintering In distant climes Turning, banking, Eyes trained On the last home stretch Wings weighted with desire For a tree, familiar Feet poised to perch On tremulous twigs Seeking the solace of roosts sundered by memory A Poem’s Birth I did not womb you for nine…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4893,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-969","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4898,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/4898"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue26\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPlucked an angry green,
\nferried by their owner\u2019s greed
\nThese shades of red that glint their skin
\nAre no virgin tree-dyed tints
\nBut the result of the lusty ardour
\nOf the hothouse
\nFull of sugared venom, they are, these mangoes
\nWaiting to sting the hubris
\nOf ignorant tongues <\/strong><\/p>\nMoon Quests<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\nWhere were you the other night?
\nBy now you must know…
\nThat in quest of your glow
\nEager eyes scanned the skies
\nWe plead, Madam, forgive our hubris
\nAnd do not misinterpret our anxious inquires
\nFor we live in a place
\nWhere things that delay
\nMay never, ever re-appear
\nLike constant electricity and pensions and cheaper prices
\nHence, we hope you’ll then see
\nHow your seeming delay
\nDrowned us in despair
\nAnd a dark, dark fear
\nThat the robbers that roam our atmosphere
\nHad somehow climbed upward
\nAnd stolen you away
\nAh, kind luminary
\nTis true many sins mar these climes
\nHigh iniquities that would hurt your sight
\nBlacker than the gloom which
\nYou seek to dispel with your light
\nBut please
\nMild mistress, Henceforth, suspend us not in suspense
\nBut always beam your timely light
\nTo hearts both pious and upright
\nLest our hungers may age to anger or fights
\nLet your certain cycles
\nBathe us with consoling constancy
\nThat our hopes may ride on your radiance As you shine the promise of future feasts<\/p>\n