Under Different Circumstances by Eleanor Denvir
I would choose to live in your cabin of wood
on the dry rugged hill with the wild scrabble bush,
the olive tree shade, the musical spring
where the children played.
Each night in winter I would pass my hand
under heavy woollen covers
into the place where you had shifted
and take your heat.
Each morning I would wake after you,
search your shape from rocks.
Here is my house in the North
sand-yellow, soot-black.
Here are my doors, front and back,
canal curve, shopping trolley,
stale water, high reed, black berry.
The heavy jasmine scent in summer.
I can pull open the loft window,
watch the orange-purple Black Combe drop,
the scaffolder’s skyline battle,
rise of debtor’s tower.
I can listen to the dusk siren.
I hear the freight-train’s two a.m. thunder,
catching the dream-horse’s deepening flight,
towing its load of childhood bricks,
fabric scraps, moon-carved wax.
Carting these boxes of different choices,
unturned corners, goodbye voices,
breaking an orbit, riding a nebula
and letting fall upon my sleeping face
the star-fed dust of different circumstances.
Head over heels
This feeling is without end
On and on it goes building moss as it rolls past all sense and sensibility denied access
On and on it rolls despite its depths becoming clogged mud inside and out
Rolling through bare fields its quest for desire unmatched unattended creeps on desperate for a speck or an itch a lychin of oxygen
Fuel for the alpine air it breaths for you
Desire desire rolling on without end the eye could bleed with it watching it go off like that blowing up all inside and out with the quest for the feeling.
The Nest by Claire Haden Dawes
Is this true the truth
Or an ugly jumper pulled over
This willing native is pulled by any Bait to her reflections.
Unconscious choice less desire
Wondering the depths she sees a likeness
Alone again disgust creeps inside
Would salt to the wound be easier
This is a trap
She tests herself with the greed of it
She is no better yet I think no worse
Honest in her dislike pushing away the old and cruel for lightness
Will this bird remember the nest when the winter rains have dampened and cobwebs grown heavy inside
Regret of this will linger and brambles my intrude on the happy spring
Her creation is spun so dear now its body is ridged yet its contents damp and empty will soon disappear
