Lunar

by Elisabeth O'Neill

I belong to the fields
that shelter your home –
a stitch in the patchwork.

My wrists,
twin umbilical cords
torn from Earth,
are stained purple and bleeding.
Your fierce adoration
floods rivers of vein,
their flesh banks
smoothed faultless by rain.

Word of spring in the circles
of water on water
outwards to nowhere.
Still they remain.

Wandering,
flawed and fragile as parchment
beneath the blood moon,
I suffer the blindness
of traffic fume cloud cover

feeling your hands
in the lunar pull.
Shore to my tidal swell
homewards.

Through mud, thick
with the hours awake,
I stumble
on seconds urged forwards,
your arms never nearer

my name ever
graced by your lips
as you wake.
I wonder

if I became air,
my life marked by a stone,
would you move each one
until you uncovered me?
Would you shape
living blood to dead skin,
and descend to me
making us one again?

I take the path
of the stardust within me,
that once passed through yours
when we were the dark
before knowledge.

Civilised Wilderness

by Elisabeth O'Neill

We took the same places
As our younger selves.
The changes ignored
By moving bodies
Beyond the glass walls
Stood with the verse
Between us
And the unaltered city.

Street performers
Displayed their feathers,
Crowns and anklets.
On any other rock
We would have stopped to dance.
Even the music,
Exotic in its step
With the air,
Was tempted by the static
Nature of our island.
The ink in the papers
Assures us with rumour;
The borders won’t shift.

Among the birds and us
A collar is arrogance.
Colour suggests
The intent of the bearer.
We are content with this.
We don’t threaten change
Or invite it.

This is life
At its most adequate.
Our bonds chafe
But mouths
Must be still.