No distance, The reading & Triptych
by Matt Bryden
[ poetry - december 10 ]
No distance
My lungs, two purses of stones
sealed tightly with string.
My students' eyes, freshly cut hair
I can't meet. The water's
reflection is too shallow, I want
to submerge myself in deeps.
The light glances
off water the depth of a child's steps.
The scent of a stable,
that cropped straw.
The reading
We took the pregnancy test together - I mean,
you sat on the can, I was on the hallway steps.
A silver clock tocked out 30 minutes.
Did you want it to be positive? you asked.
one hand to a jar of bees
- our compass arm.
Triptych
When you cut my fall by twenty metres,
your crooked elbow just there
as I passed your lookout that sky-blue day,
the thawing snow exploding in a crystal dust
as it slipped from the boughs
we formed a dance, linked as sycamore seeds,
our eyes alternately meeting the light
and blinking at the snow that lies
and has lied for the previous three weeks.
*
Every pressure smelted
in the crucible of our closed door -
your room a wing off the quotidian
visited by maids and messengers
visible in their leaving and arriving.
As they skate away on thin wheels,
the balcony rises till I can scarcely
make out their backs - your lookout now below me
where, aware I was falling, you took me aback.
*
It aged me to find you in a meadow,
upstanding, staring over another burnt bridge
despite the coils of smoke, the spattered
mud
riding your trouser-cuffs, your frantic soaked shoes,
your cheeks washed of colour.
