Poems and Fragments

Sunlight in the Afternoon

Hello all, I am so pleased to be able to share a few poems I have recently written in the time between my studies. In many ways they touch on light, nature, and personality, as well as the act of writing itself. I especially enjoyed writing the little prose fragment at the end!

I hope you will enjoy.

Artist: Anne Magil

Sunlight in the Afternoon

the sun is almost gone
and the light
is too far 
below the trees
to slant through my window 
in clear rays.
i ought to live 
in a cave somewhere—
where that gracious light
will shine just right
through the cracks of rock,
and where a fire 
is always burning
to keep the coffee hot. 
that is something 
i could hold onto—
a warmth, a liquid warmth, 
bright and bursting:
running, swimming through my chest 
and spilling over, outward 
across these pages. 

i write from a place of warmth. 

and desert fires erupt 
lighting up 
the darkness—
to reveal a wasteland 
of wandering shamans 
and black cats.
for the life of me 
i could not put those fires out
if i tried 
even with some scratchy blanket.
they survive on my oxygen.
those flames warp and flail
and rise and rise,
and so long as i keep breathing
on these pagan pages
they will never die.

i often mistake 
the flickering of this fire
for the sound of trees 
rustling in the wind,
or the murmurings 
of my voice
for the raptured speech 
of tyrannical kings.
yes, over my papers 
i exercise a tyranny
and will let no-one else speak
or have liberty 
to question my images,
or the placement of the em dash,
or the use of oxford comma.
i run this village:
a veritable fiefdom. 
and i brutalise my villagers—
they offer me words in return
and i am pleased,
so long as they
burn themselves for me—
so long as they ache 
and yearn 
and wish for an end.
some end they find in the em dash—

---

Pressure

i write my best stuff 
under pressure—that's a lie.
i prefer to be careless 
and unburdened.
like an orphan 
huddled in blankets
by the window
of his cold dormitory,
past bedtime
past caring
about what others think
or feel 
about his place in the world. 
and after a long day 
he watches the snow crystals
fall and melt 
against the glass.
no friends, no girlfriend,
but the fireplace across the hall
enlivens the sheets and pillows
with a warmth that feels 
like another person.

yes,
when i write poetry
i prefer to be careless and unburdened,
like the orphan by the window. 

---

Alone on Campus

alone on campus
for the 132nd day.
i deserve an award
for being alone.
for being away from others
for long periods of time.

and the torrents rage—
no, the currents pass 
gently along.
and I watch
from the embankment
as a koala sprinkles 
gum leaves over my hat. 
Things are just continuing, 
as always.

and sometimes 
when the moss
and the algae
are heaped up in crops
along the river-bed
i wade in, and slip,
and hit my head—
and i am left sitting there,
flittering wet pebbles
in sunlit water,
half smiling
and embarrassed.
but then i think:
has a fallen tree 
made sound at all
if nobody was around 
to hear it?

in those moments i remember 
how utterly desolate
are the rivers and the trees,
the koalas and their gum leaves,
without the grace of your company:
those gums and pines 
are free and forgetful sentinels 
who cannot find time for me.
they are too busy 
smiling towards the sky.

---

Prose Fragment

I am telling the truth. The mountain air really is crisp and freeing, its breeze clipping the leaves as they fall and tumble into forest streams, and sometimes landing on top of my thankful head. Yes, thankful. I really am thankful to be here, away from you and everything else that seemed far too stifling and close. Here among the trees, slanted as they are in flanks along the mountainside, daily I follow a rabbit’s trail that winds and coils in serpentine circuity around these friendly elevations. And this coil reminds me of the way your hands would feel too tight around my neck—too tight for speaking or for breathing. But here, that feeling is cleansed, and as I walk along the mountain paths I feel all the tightness, and all the enclosed spaces of my mind begin to unravel.

And the clouds work so nicely together with the sun to give shade and light whenever they are needed. The biosphere works together here in ways that we never could.

Yet, I suppose there are certain things about these mountains that remind me of you in other ways; those parts of your personality which loosen the breath and reveal wrinkles around my eyes. The trees sometimes drop these little black seedlings that remind me of coffee beans, and which the little forest creatures scoop up by the handful, quickly disappearing among the hovels and the dark paths. Then I think about the warm coffee cups that we would share, and sometimes, in laughter, spill over our chairs; or along the collar of my shirt; or along the sunflowers of your dress.