Unrequited Water Blooms Poem by MARINA GIPPS

i


Water blooms under a hard glass pool,
and slowly my pleasure dies
as a worm wiggles past sad minnows spent
in the breath of fierce light-
the arrival of sea creatures
in the mouth of the underwater cave.
I step away from the splash,
a charring sensation under the afternoon sun
that magnifies all dark things.

ii

Ivy grows in caves where the young breed.
Stars of plankton wink in underground waves.
The lips of desolation have sunk
to the small trees of a landlocked bay-
forbidden corals forever coveted
where i wait for you, courting silence.

iii

One day I dreamt of being a big swan
but my feathers sank, and it was a slow swim thereafter
past broken shells promising unlikely songs.
And the light reflecting on the water depths
told the truth of me and my sunken bloomings.

iv

The headlights darken as I look for you.
On a long peninsula, a nightwatch asks
if you have seen me-
the old woman who suffers
when a bird has been shot
in the fog.

I lie naked in the elusive shadows of a river,
the mindless shells make sounds in their curved harbors,
broken infinite tomorrow.
The water, irridescent ashthrower
turning about memory,
an owl cries of many sinking stones.
I watch the tide sing silver under the moonlight,
a lonely leaf edges towards the shore.
Many leaves fall from a tree that lingers
over water like a weed.

v

Relief-that I am gone
in the water blooms,
alive in the wind, rocking
the burdenous sea-
the loneliest thing I know,
blooms in agony.

A watchman's lantern is dropped from sight
as a phantom lily slides
down the cheeks of memory,
and the wind banters with my unnatural light.