Four Poems by Annie Blake

.

Graveyard Bodies Turn Over Every Hundred Years

for Ruby

.

their green creek bellies like those of unremembered

vases    the twilight buttons up dusk and the honey

moon like a hand worn cardigan   the longevity of cemeteries

and winsome meadows   the house is a series of smiling saturdays

how her sniveling nooks shed their dark barked canoes   because i have forgotten

how water laughs   an effulgence in my mind

for once i felt a coruscation   life’s crackle   the turning over

of winter wood like the ploughing of a field   a nascent

conversation between funeral and pentecostal ghosts

whatever births have been carried through its threshold  how feathery

the cold wind feels when crossed   the unrailed bridges of childhood

the unreeling of middle life   a crisp ocean floor and the teetering of shadows owning up

to their merciless hiding places                                           seek

.

How Autumn Burns The Maple Leaves 

for Evie

.

for the forest fire boiled in the sky

night ocean   panoply of rose veined with flint

the sun marshmallow white   o winter willow

and her offering of golden hair   leaves of forgiving tongues

so thirsty they spawn the earth and drink

pigeon or stone-colored mist circling   streaming   my ghosts thawing

all at once  how they climb the hungry trees    east

sun sailing between the nests   nets like our woven hands

she has waited all these ungrateful years for me

.

Saturday 

for Ruby

.

for when i closed his eyes there was still a warmth

over his skin   i would never see him moving in my house

again   but i could finally see through him   how he was

the only reason his mother and father

married   so others wouldn’t talk   so he was never taken

away   because forcing herself into marriage was the only way

to free herself from her mother

i told my son some photos in frames are best covered by others

deaths were becoming more sensual

and more alive in me   conciliating closures and a hand sewing

of coffin hems   and i held their hands like the knot of two threads

and even though he was satiated with grain and under the ground

and our full cup of sleep   the sun outside the window   furnished

with its luxurious light the languishing fronds

how they wrap and curl like gift ribbon   cocoons   carried off

in the fall wind like aureate wings   i am enthusiastic about the habiliments

of hibernation   scent of a cake of soap   cave chimes

on the outside tinkle like rain   i once heard about people speaking

of the spring and the moon wallowing in the lake

so i aired out her body for the scent of mothballs was thick

and when i stood up my legs still dizzy   i remembered

it was saturday   how the walls of the world yawned and creaked

as the dawn hues dappled and even the shorn webs of our old

corn rooms were softened silk in milk

.

Wedding Day 

for Frank

.

those days lost   our newly molded faces as fine as waxed masks

the unbuttoning of the house of the last world   lest we forget

how my legs burned that day right up

to my chest   for forests do come to some   as clean-screened

and thick as the memory of the death feather tick   it’s true

that woods are haunted   that crows are a never ending expulsion

crown of feathers   their black robust bodies   how branches lay

their unagaped eggs for really they are hard unhatched

radicles in the mud   it is true some spend all their lives adjusting

wings no matter how peppery and cold

i dreamt i could walk where no steps had ever sunk or embossed

the ground   i dreamt i had a sweetness in my hand that even bees could

hang off

it is true that woods are haunted   even during the day

and how their thorns sting

in bed my body cracks like old kitchen tiles   for god’s perimeter

slides like a packet through the branches in my chest   listening

to the psalms sung from his red ticking knoll   his palm holds me

in deep sleep’s casement

my eyelashes   untangled legs of infant spiders like unbending

ferns   cushioning the light and an infiltration of womb’s eye   and everything

in my mind was milky even though the glass faced east   spoilt

shadows out of criss-crossed mist   unspinning their brilliant birth

for black feathers and wiry claws have been dispersed

from the dusky nooks of their hill willows   the day’s accoutrements

her dress is muslin white and unlike any other mourning i have ever known

bats upright and crooning   roosting on the ribs of a ship

as i dried and washed   i sat by the mansard window   and the mixtures

of the world like cotton threads hemming my skins   warm and

how they dapple under my clothes   life has her own sugary

hands   lithe fingers as eternal as keys and latches   children who were here

long before i was born   and their scent of wanted clothes

are transparent when they’re lifted   flitting

of a scintillating wheat meadow

so i waited for him to arrive   for a savior can be someone who merely

parks along the curb of the street   thaw the iron latch like a frozen

tongue and a door which can savor

you   the dripping of bees from our mouth

.

Annie Blake (BTeach, GDipEd) is a divergent thinker, a wife and mother of five children. She commenced school as an EAL student and was raised and, continues to live in a multicultural and industrial location in the West of Melbourne. She enjoys experimenting with Blanco’s Symmetrical and Asymmetrical Logic to explore consciousness and the surreal and phantasmagorical nature of unconscious material. Her work is best understood when interpreted like dreams. She is an advocate of autopsychoanalysis and a member of the C G Jung Society of Melbourne, Australia. You can visit her on www.annieblakethegatherer.blogspot.com.au   and Log into Facebook | Facebook

.

.