Salt Air
Spring - land left us as dust
sea spared us, waves like fruit, pips
of silver fish, sharp edged mussels,
spiny urchins. We suck at the leather of long
beads. I am thick incoherence
tongue tasting, tongue tied, I - thin as the lip
of an eroded cliff, licking for salt in the air
greedy, chapped-pale-slight, slow but
hot after the stillness of hibernation
woken by the surprise of a long breath
in the thickened smoke, how wide-long
is this white world?
O, occluded holes, filled with the bones
of us. Thaw and flowers of milk
quietly moving like old fingers
we are knapped from flint, those
slices thin as an adze edge. Why, you asked
do we fight so hard for this? A bleak
day of flood and mud, another of tender
green. Oysters, oysters, silk of high tide.
Enemy wrapped in honey coloured furs
How the grim cold settles in you
in the same way milk sap numbs the tongue,
itβs neither here and never there.
If I were a fish there would be none of that.
Words steep as glaciers or clear poison,
old meat, a horn through the muscle, perhaps
putrid β kill me or let me live cleanly,
I want none of your complications.
A skin wraps it up so nicely,
prettily, see the hand closed,
but open to gifts. Possibly I am tied to you
forever. Where can I go to escape?
Into a crevasse, a smoky cone, like
mole on cheek. I am the last
call before disaster. Furred skin of a golden
dog, wild wheat, the voices of an oracle
two feet above our heads.
Belinda Diepenheim was born in Te Whanganui a Tara near Taputeranga Island. She has published in a variety of New Zealand and international magazines and ezines. Belinda published Waybread & Flax with Steele and Roberts in 2015.