Mercy Island
You left this morning while I slept
the rowboat filled with peaches
like tender cheeks like swollen words
the fruit we’d picked throughout the week
The pier is slick under my feet
the pilings smell of sea and rust
The gouges are white where dock lines cut
through soft copper-treated wood
Along the path long blades of grass
slip beneath my calloused feet
The dog’s coat is wet against my leg
and gritty-cold like salted cod
We breathe small clouds into the morning air
she shakes and freckles me with mud
She trots beside and circles me
as diligent as any lover
I find two peaches that you dropped
warm as living as pebbled beaches
Fur and sand between my teeth
then sweet my tongue our lives reversed
Already autumn stakes its claim
unclenching fists of purple heather
The willow grouse flies low go back
go back and feigns a broken wing
The sheep bells’ clanging rip the day
from dawn with jagged little tugs
snagging sundew and cotton sedge
to make curry heather crows
A month or two to stock the shed
then sheer the ewes for winter’s lambing
I plant the lilies when the waxwing
plucks the last of the rowan berries
I find someone to mind the place
in summer buy a boat and sail
Around the other hemisphere
I gather quince along the Congo
I look for you in the tops of teak trees
I hope you’re with the manatees
Sea cows like hobbled sirens
sweet like shuttered windows
Just once I think I see your breath
escape the river and feel it flowing
Between around my fingers
a parrot chides go back go back
(An Intimate Retribution. Wigestrand forlag, 2009)
Thank you for taking the time to read/listen. I’ll be back again Sunday with another process journal entry.
I hope you have a great week!
Warmly,
Ren Powell’s Acts of a Recovering Drama Queen
Writing against Melodrama by Engaging with the Natural World
Give some love. It only takes a little ❤️.
Such a wonderful poem.
I confess some lack of “whole” clarity, but that’s on me, not you. Your words of themselves are wonderful. I can read each brief stanza like each is one breath. Taken in the moment, that is another kind of whole experience, like each step walking down a street. There, a crack in the pavement, there, a tree, there, a hundred fallen leaves, each amazed by all the others in company. Actually, I feel that’s a good way to see. Thank you Ren for allowing me to approach your thoughts and feelings so generously. Like you always do. Good writing, and I love listening too, adding a full measure more of intimacy.