SUMMER DARES NOT

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A poetry mini-collection compiled through an ecofeminist lens, exploring interdependencies between myth and truth, human and other, modernity and fulfillment

Agnes

Agnes flowed like

Deep violet currents

Through the rocky tapestry

Of this seashore town

Appearing

Across ages

From wrinkle to wrinkle

A golden spectre

To haunt a heritage.

When salted winds lay settled

And pale skies reigned clear

You could see her

Tracing the shoreline

Softening its bite

On her return to

Familiar stone

Fresh eyes

With borrowed nostalgia.

She surfaced

Every now and then

Had a knack for

Venturing

The truth of things

Ladies of the village in turn

Feared her half-pitying gaze

And the monsters she weaved

In their beds and cradles.

Her lovers never once

Looked upon the same face

But in equal felt

Love’s blistering tide

Swirl in their veins

Though they never

Could quite detail

The subject for that

Drowning desire.

She’d disappear with the moon

Retreat into a different

Kind of truth

The Lady of the Rocks

Though they would

Never admit it

Men pray to Agnes

For safe passage

On petulant seas.

Sometimes

In the deepest indigo night

As crackling waves

Toss and turn

A figure is seen

At the mouth

Of a cliff-side cave

A bone-dry

Eye of the storm.

The cave

Opens up

Along the tarnished coast

Appearing to many as

An abyss

A gravitational reckoning.

To some

A beacon home

An earthen, siren song.

Whale song

Stalled summer

Old people shouldn’t drive

You said as we zoomed by

An anxious senior

It’s shameful any of us

Are driving at all, mind

Imagine functioning

Public transport

What a feeling, though

Gliding by in a morning glow

Imagine ancient Romans

In a Fiat 500

At a service stop

We got fries and plant-based meat

When we got

Back on the road

We discovered that you

Adore the sun

And I adore what the sun touches

-

The city’s air makes my chest tighten.

A heroin user shouts at me,

As I stand in line at Planet Organic

What good will come of any of this?

We wonder

Let’s grab a drink

And watch the synchronised swimming

I wonder which countries will win

You cry as medals are handed out

You say turn on the news, but I can’t

See

Children die

At the hands of men

A common denominator

I might get my nails done

For my birthday

I want to paint pottery and swim

Is solitary community

A contradiction, you ask?

What we long for

Is oddly simple

-

Summer took its time

It doesn’t feel the same

As before

The heat

Panics me now

A little

You say I’ll always have

Summer blood.

Selfie

Hekla

Sister Serpentine