Privilege

Composed alive

More than

Across the summer grasses' fattened heads,
the wild herbs' yellow blooms -
two pigeons at the bird-bath,
sipping in turn.

They spot me pretending
not to be watching. I can see
they don't totally mistrust, nor do they trust me.

It's a healthy state of being
for pigeons and humans - that state
of being neither one
nor the other, but between,
between two poles of feeling.

Are we the only species on two legs -
obliged to hold those poles
in balance? It could be.

It could be some humans
are birds more than mammals,
and Darwin and Linnaeus' wondrous achievements
perhaps need updating.

Anyway. So across the big-headed grasses and blooms
I sit, noting the segments of cloud
in the sky, and how they resemble
an insect's belly. Remember Foucault
and his 'Age of Similitude'.
Is my thinking that archaic?

For those of you suckling babes,
or welding gates, or taking bookings
from holidaymakers - the Age of Similitude
refers to the Renaissance, when people found
resemblances, connections between things.

Whereas Darwin-and-them thought
in categories, you know - like lists,
and generally linear systems.

It's all of it useful
to us, more or less.

Anyway, the fat-headed grasses.
The birds so full of summer
they can't stop twittering.
All that
is so much older
than the baby humanity -
Nature's most recent invention,
God's last contribution.

Suddenly a pigeon hurtles
gurglingly out of the Dogwoods
and, like a flustered arrow,
shoots by at the level of my ear,

soon followed by his partner,
equally absurd: a metre off the ground,
wings spread, chest out -

as if she were some joke
on Virgin Mary
finally beyond the blues.

I cannot help but laugh.
I laugh as if I were
in company, with fellows
of my ilk.

And I am that: yellow flowers,
seed-plump stalks; the Robin practising.

Nature talks more than I can say
in one poem
at the end
of a day.

- Silke Heiss, 16th November 2018

An extract from what is at this stage the opening poem of Section 6, 'Shaman', of Greater Matter

Story

Bumbling through the house

looking for

my next task

I turn

a corner

at a door, and almost

fall –

find my face just short of stuck in the paunch

of a giant –

the ogre

of

my Experience!

He glowers down at me.

Lucky the house

has such a high ceiling

(you can’t reach the spider webs

even with the longest

feather duster).

My heart is in my throat

and his huge, rough hand

is round my throat

squeezing tight –

what to do?

But before he squashes me completely

he says

I want your attention,

where do you have your dreams?

I point him to the bedroom

and nimble as a baboon

he ducks, moves slowly through the doors,

lumbers around all the corners

and then drops me,

sits beside me,

heavies my eyes

with his rough palm

and all

is darkness.

Days, weeks, months

the monster holds me hostage

to

his dreams,

and when I blink sometimes between his fingers when they shift

I see him changing –

blue and horned,

gold and maned, black and sleek

he myths the creatures

who once populated places

preceding Eden, even;

but again, again

he makes me

sleep ...

(Extract)

- Silke Heiss

Perfectly Present - title poem from Section 5 of Greater Matter

The tortoise of me is making slow, but steady progress. Here's the title poem from the fifth section of Greater Matter.

Perfectly Present

I spent time with fellow-widow Gwyneth

– our regular weekly keeping tabs

on our days, work,

thoughts, experiences –

she too’d been mugged

by the mugginess dragging down the sky;

that it wasn’t only me who was dof  was reassuring.

Over tea and cake and talk

there was a cooling,

we discussed the blessing of thoughts that appear as beings,

intentions that catch you in motion

before you’ve thought –

our obedience to intuition

makes us a port

for

Spirit.

I came home to the sunflung polka dots of white roses dancing

in the hedge beside the garage door;

and writing this now

– not in the obligatory present tense

(which many modern writers use for no better reason than to hog an effect)

but in the elegiac mood

of reverence that holds in faith

that which we can’t

grasp –

I am certain

that what is past

is perfectly present.

- Silke Heiss

My very own graffiti wall - a pair of poems on pity