The Sounding Poem by Anthony Dalby

The Sounding

Rating: 5.0


A shaft of light piercing the air
Cradled in a leaf’s tremble
Sand cradling the foetus toes
And water arc light shimmer
broken into sparks
shatter on the light surface
oh my ears the drip dropp
the sound of colours not seen but heard
which ebb and bulb canter laugh and glitter

Settled I listen again
And there still the constant longing
Golden light
Syrups my heart
But cannot satisfy
The dull red ache for light flight
In emerald green
Though a mother’s love
The doe’s muscled tongue on her calf

And you Kate send the brown jug spinning in an endlessness
Of memory on and on and on
In orbit down on
to the floor
And in the eternity of tease touching the floor
the eternal shatter
shard moves from shard turn and curl
held in September light powdered in dust…..

The raw creep of the longing awakens
And I crouch weeping
For the lost child
Lost hearts souls earths deer seas
God-all you mired in the dirt cracked and burnt
Smashed and mired
Drowned and gouged out
held in the gulls hard beak

Break open my heart bird
And pour the words on the rocks. Let the language bleed
Glut in the cracks
vomit from the void inside
and the death that is the birthing from the maw

Let the sounding begin

Name them all; tongue their noise
each delicate flicker, for in their naming
Their fluttering hearts awake
And gossamer rises in the dew
And they are lighter and finer
And as slender as the thistledown
Held in the autumn light of the roaring moon
Swifts in flight
Shards arise

And you my peewit
Tumble with me in the dusk light
Half seen in the twining light of river mist
But heard full on the wheeling sear of your sounding
Tumble but do not touch
for the space between us is sacred…

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