Nine for Gaia
by Tony Beyer
The estrangement
poetry is the language we all used before the Tower of Babel scrambled it so confident were we so proud we believed we could compete with our maker God (whichever version of these events you prefer to affiliate with) since then we have devoted our ingenuity to imagining reasons to hate each other even in monoglot societies the appetite for distrust is so engrained mere colour or religion or poverty or relative wealth can be made an excuse and the towers keep being built tall enough to scrape the gold foil off angels’ wings
Facing west
here day and night the wind talks its way in from the coast lending voice to trees and loose roof iron plant pots rattling on their earthen saucers set up a beat clouds also move to what we call wild rocks are made so by the sea fuming white around dark straggled clusters birds seem to delight in such weather hurling themselves about and shouting with excitement it’s pleasant to think they call out to the dead who loved this place to remind them of living
Provenance
this bird skull I found on the beach scoured and rinsed bone-white by the sea once held the co-ordinates for planetary travel could discern via alternate light and night distances between continents locating over them among an identical myriad a single nesting site and now with its purpose served it fits inside the cavity of my palm convex and smooth like an egg out of which in time who knows what might hatch
Raven and the First People
Bill Reid
he must have wondered what these were emerging bare and featherless some of them buttocks first from the wide-jawed clam shell inquisitive and mischievous he couldn’t help prying and prising with his long curved bill to see what else might be hidden still less could he have predicted all the trouble they would cause released out on the planet mischievous and inquisitive in their turn
Left field
this was Jack London territory where ice tinkled in the blood instead of in the glass the dogs lamented at night their diet of caribou tallow and beds under frozen snow men with beards arm wrestling on a crate beside the fire uttered appalling expletives it would take a book of asterisks to represent their discourse truthfully attractive as a road sign pitted with bullets
Uptake
eels at the feeding place visibly punctuate the river long commas with short quotation marks at the head end but the river still says what it has to without pause untranslatable too into human language unless by associations only humans can fabricate pane of green reflections transporter of forests the steady pour through encroaching vegetation upstream the underside of a bridge between hills thirsty for rain calm glide and shallow eddies where ground flattens towards the sea opaque in places or clear as memory the river itself a human appellation after all
Removal
with the tree gone I miss our cherry blossoms and the loud bees attending them there seems too much spring sky above the garden too unrelievedly blue the sawn wood though dried out over a season has warmed our recent months and the fence undermined by the thickening bole has been restored sound human reasons for the change encouraging good will among neighbours while out of sight the intricate root system equivalent we are told to the height and scope of the branches that hung overhead concludes at nothing at ground level a ghost cage receding slowly through the earth always enclosing darkness
A glimpse of the sea through rain
from the high point on one of our usual walks hoods up jackets zipped the distant blue is neither hills nor some city among them but the frequently disrupted unchangeable yet changing tide abrading the coast it so depends on to define itself so easy at times like this to forget gravity and the nature of the ground we tread on slow turn of the planet disregarding our perspectives then the squall changes tack and only what is near is visible ourselves and our small circle of attention close to the crust
Provider
in the lean forest single strokes of an axe clack and echo between remaining trees burn off and die back and second growth are terms used to mitigate destruction all flesh is breath however many we have left to use while there is time to use
Tony Beyer writes in Taranaki, New Zealand. His print titles include Dream Boat: selected poems (HeadworX) and Anchor Stone (Cold Hub Press).
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