Anthropology

Does a runner see with his legs?
Two capillary sticks of all-purpose material
fit for exercise, ice-skating,
kicking moss-balls down a country road in the blur of winter.
Fit for a King of dancing, upright in doorways eating jam.
Going inside trees and kneading the knolls with the edge of your shins.
Blushful as you jitterbug across an ice-rink,
steaming from the top of your bald head were thoughts are more than alive.
Becoming a soaring back against the sky should you sprout three wings.
Two for flying,
one for catching mayflies, buzz-words as you head back down.
The rub-rub-rub of two thighs together,
like striking a fire between flint and Burdock.
Or, falling flat on your back,
you still wouldn’t know all there is to know.
Running with multi-coloured ribbons around your wrists,
a fox mask on,
a ceremonial sword,
smoke bellowing from your ears
beating down Alstroemeria,
beating it down,
down,
beat it down;
until you’re running
without duty to dress.

© Eve Redwater 2012

Back Then

It reminds me of a summer day in June.
Cats caterwauling, one ginger-striped alighting a rooftop
walking the spine I thought far too high.
The bees, hungry for the watermelon, swarm the flesh-bit pairing knife.
Mother swats them away with a wooden spatula as we giggle behind
sticky gun-shot fingers.

Dogs in the yard play finicky with their shadows.
The son next door swaddled in a rough pink towel after the water fight.
That time that we both posed for a photograph,
balloons in each hand.
When a bird flew in through the French doors, quick to recognise its mistake;
like a businessman caught in a lift in the depths of winter,
I’ve never seen a decision to leave made that quick.
The biggest dragonfly we’d ever seen;
we screamed together, swatting with a newspaper, magazines,
and sweating hands,
then fell laughing on all fours after it was gone.

© Eve Redwater 2012

Evolution of Ideas

Upon entering the greened-out park,
you find a man slumped beside a derelict potting shed.
The dogs attached to silver chains in both your hands
realise him long before you do,
raising their old white faces to sniff the acidic lull of liquor.

Not long after, you find a blackbird.
Feet first before the heavens,
like that spider you crushed under a Ministers face last night.
Feathers drawn out in its final butterfly stroke toward the air,
eyes plucked out already, probably by a lifelong friend.

And you remind yourself that,
not so different to the pull on your arms,
the soft accidental slide of a baking worm beneath your feet,
that should you peer around the corner
to the sleeping mat of that one slumped man,
or behind a tree, under that park bench, or even
a compost lid,
you’d find no friends
nor amber stout to feed his voice,

just the cramped up newspaper from yesteryear,
three shoes with holes in,
two shoelaces in a river,
him, all alone in the world.

© Eve Redwater 2012

Silence Speaks

I see the twitch in the net-curtains again this morning,
the neighbour, unknown, nameless to meet, busies himself
with morning papers, pastries, the steam of the iron is clear
to me now; no more so remote than the long tails alighting
the telephone pole – chattering to themselves several hymns thick,
dowsing the street below with a harmonious clink, a harmonious
clatter.

Mr. Unknown unfolds the news, unaware.
Not a penchant for watching, more of a hobby of sorts,
politer than stalking, perhaps even talking to his cheeks,
like so many people do when they’re not really
listening.

Never to meet him past the bakery stand; even in June when
loaves are at their most swollen, the rye and the blueberry jam
(half and inch thick), like a pleasant curd, a winding curb
children enjoy driving their oxblood mouths around,
pale fingers, all smiles, sticky, sticky; sticky.

Across the road, my nameless venture exposes a tooth,
then a tongue. But rather than the red you’d so come to expect,
that dental room exposes its palatable secret;
as white as his eyes – of course, of course,

blind as anything, clumsy, hungry, human; afraid.

© Eve Redwater 2012

Coyote

“If the mind is like a hall in which thought is like a voice speaking, the voice is always that of someone else.”
      — Wallace Stevens

Unravelling beauty in the imagination,
like the halls where sleep answers in a voice that is not our own.

The portmanteau of amber fur
mixed with black,
the white of the eyes
surrounded and circular.

He pads forward         adagio
a tender velour of mouth
and a cackle in the hedgerows
thrusts its call toward our ears,

in which          the prosthetic leg of night
coasts into ground’s well-hollow,
more of a pond
than blanket of darkness

where           he swims with tail in tow,
the prodigy of all those who adore
blackness.

But before that,
he stands upon two almond feet
kingly
       abated
and presents me with silver:
a soft slink
      of god-knows what –

      a gift,
or something else?

© Eve Redwater 2012

Death of a Spouse

Then the flowers opened their palms towards the nesting birds,
browning, warm, stuck with mud and pigeon down; he, the last,
remains wrapped in his Magdalene carousel. Twin forks of the swallow tail.
Motionless, same as the soft steps of the tawny fox – pacing upon typing
tippy-toes; ones we wish gone and away with the death of winter, but snub
our green-lit patches with tenfold cubs –

                                                                     the blur of ice and the pond,
the bending of knees to meet the Buddleja, nature’s surreptitious bed-linen.
All around us now. Same as parched tongues and the wagging tails of bumble
bees, rotation, rotation –
                               and O how the truth of cold’s meaning sews it’s way through, when
fingers meet with the secret stowed beneath the soil: a black toothed comb
with the moon in it’s hollow; lost when the sky peached over and she threw her arms
towards the clouds, the ripe lamp of death lit under her feet, never again
to ask you of the bend of Orion,
                   nor a sip from your cup.

© Eve Redwater 2012

(It’s been a while, I hope you’ve all been well. University has kept me busy this week, so it’s nice to be back!)

We

		We,
creatures of mimicry –
the gatherers of forked leaves, cherry blossoms
	stowed warm in your purse;
the rain bicycle – not cycle – but bicycle:
one we ride home, all “gung-ho”, better
	in a thunderstorm

		So,
instead of talking to we,
we, talk mostly, to the trees.
Or,
	the blush-hop of a robin
(splinters for tea) and, sometimes,
the rat-tat-tat of light as
		it flashes through iron
				fences
On Sundays,
	as the crowds line up, we,
well-wishers, used lovers of 
		Yggdrasil;
ticket buyers
terracotta sticking-plaster hoarders
newspaper wrapping
plastic perfume bottle top burning
			“We”

bury thumbs in jam pots
	honey bee hotels
		swallow-throats,
and
	sometimes
	the odd cactus flower

			Followers of
anything called
		house
		home

Until we, replace "I"
	with
coat-tails
	rock-graves,
the crawling on all fours until we find 
	something
		
	“finer”.

© Eve Redwater 2012

Unwelcome

We are unwelcome in the back-water of daguerreotypes
where the foxes hold their own
            (as we must do)
peated under thick mud burrows
the raven-song of May and June,

but autumn holds with no alterations
the brushwoods bend with gold and beechwood
            – the plated faces of tawny owls
under a moon I inhumed long ago
            in a cup under the stairs, mostly

unwelcome: same as loves’ soft laughter
were we spout ourselves wholly selfless in the spring,
where the white foals in
            their clumsy baying match the burr of blueish water,

and not unlike our hexed state of mind,
            a for-get-me-not moment in the corner
when thoughts astound our pin-prick heads
            and in baldness flows the light of questions.

© Eve Redwater 2012

Posted for dVersepoets “Open Link Night 32”

For a Mother Who Doesn’t Sleep

       for Mum

Unlasting, the same as
the creases in a sleeve,
a here today-gone-tomorrow-type
action.
Almost baffling;
the amount of shell-worn
trowels and pincers you’ve
stuck into the earth
at godless hours,
the salted water
and lasting smiles
with two dogs
in the corner.
The breaking of morning,
the creeps it takes:
first the leaves
of the hazelnut tree,
then the whitish path
where it curves like tallow,
sneaking up
on the bathing bird
in the centre of it all.
Stopping to tap its
finger
on the side of
your temple,
almost gone now,
a soft yet finite
incognito.
Unlasting, the same as
the creases in a sleeve,
the bird is gone,
but chased by the sun
and the wafts of
wind over
the gangrels
of grass –
steeped and steady
he leaves the water
sonorously,
and then there was you –

© Eve Redwater 2012

Nosebleed

for my Headmistress

A feisty nose-rush of amber,
you caught me off guard: stuck
as I was between the gate and the
wall. A sudden implosion; what heart
wouldn’t shake, stirred hot by loose
capillaries? I lean over, as conductors
do. Their white batons’ swirling: a
voltage of serenades to please older ears.
Pinching, what alternative is left? I
implore to my school Headmistress.
The concern in her eyes, almost violet,
very kind, always ringed, always old.
She smelled of lavender, too; the way
of seniors that I’ve taken a liking to,
one none other than I can fully
understand. By the time my head met the sink,
she had already unclogged it. I took the time to
wince my eyes, pricked with ten salted tears.
Only ten. No more were allowed, she said:
the triumphant mark of bravery. Past the
Calla flowers and into her gold office.
More lavender swathed my irony head
as I took my place among the novels,
the Vivaldi she kept in a leather chest
beside her desk. Turning my now carrion
coloured mouth towards her, we smile.
The last smile before the graduation into
another life. One where I’d meet her, one
autumn afternoon in the bakery where I worked.
Did she remember? That time I replaced
her sweetish office musk with metal, and
tissue? Word has it, the winter took her,
blessedly old that year. Beautifully scented
with the beloved fauna
my body so desperately
tried to conceal.

© Eve Redwater 2012