Monday 20 October 2014

SWEDISH LAKE




I dive, shivering.
The lake locks behind me.
Water’s indifference swarms.
I am a hollow reed falling
to where there is no wreckage.
In the bunched black,
I am too deep to hook,    
cleaving water like a prophet.,
A child crawls in my ear.

Does anyone know I’ve gone?

My hair flails -  a creel of eels, a terrible nest. 
I am Medusa turned to  stone, sinking. I cannot look back.
My heart, a howling mob of blood, cannot save  me now.
The lake holds me down with weedy fingers,
 until the mouth is breached,  the skin bowl floods,
 pours  libation for the  fleshless drowned.

I kick and  turn, scuff the mud,  and in the wake,
my old self sinks,  an ancient plague settling.
My eyes lift, migrating beyond shadows.
Something shines, a stellar corpse.   
I am at the threshold, carrying a bride,
milky white, as light as a fledgling.

Water is torn as easily as silk.
I am breaking through,
birthing myself,
a molecular evolution,
grasping air as if it were a trapeze.
My hands strike the water.
An infant moon fragments.
Voices call  from the jetty.
Below the surface, I am nameless.












                           More of my poems in http://www.warscapes.com/poetry/not-revolution, 
http:// www.rowayat.com (new Egyptin literary magazine in print), http://www.chanticleer-press.com