In the Eye of the Storm
~~~~ Three Collections of Poems ~~~~
Linda Talbot
Copyright Linda Talbot 2013
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~~~~~Table of Contents~~~~~
Introduction
Demeter's Dance [collection of 13 poems]
Breakages [collection of 24 poems]
Moonbirds and Wild Water [10 poems from Greece]
Two Final Poems
Author's Note
Introduction
Within turmoil, distress and the poignancy of place, lies the motionless eye of the storm with perspectives of insight and occasional calm.
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Demeter's Dance
TO MARCUS BY THE CORN
The boy paused by the corn. Half comprehending,
in the low wind listening. A liaison with the land.
He stood where boys before had paused, and sensed
the corn lands’ primal source,
that lies far back and will persist
beyond his life.
It gathers to it pain and spent remorse
and fractured joy,
in waves of timeless wheat.
A noiseless knowledge,
holding hard the boy,
so that he paused and felt the force beneath his feet.
It bears the sorrow and the love
beyond the boundless sky and mortal span,
through co-ordinated time:
through fire and ice, conspiracy of wheat;
from landbirth to the primacy of man.
The force now through him flowed.
It was the song beneath the soil;
the keening of the clay
he carried home that day.
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MOON HARE
The woman feels the fur beneath her skin.
Her senses race.
The moon corrupts her flesh.
She quivers with a curse cast on the man,
then springs; a flying figment of the night;
moon-white malice, to his bed.
There she lies in lust and loveliness,
filling him with visions of the moon,
until, bewitched, estranged and lulled by lunar light,
he dies.
Note: In folklore it was thought a girl left by her lover returned as a white hare that could only be seen by the faithless man. The hare might follow him, even save him from danger, but would ultimately destroy him.
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DEMETER
She was the colour of the corn.
But now the face that made men kneel
is mud-filled furrows.
Yet when the corn is high, her ghost grows gold
and is the wandering of the wind;
her blood, the poppies at the wheatfield’s edge.
She was the faith that, for the people grew the grain;
a hope and fear held blindly in the mind.
But gods pass like the stirring of an airless August day
and are relegated, root-like to the dark.
Yet as geneticists manipulate her face,
she watches, waiting for the calling of her name,
as we reap the calculated grain;
a passing miracle of man.
GAIA
She is neither fish nor metabolic flesh.
She has no lore nor allocated land.
She disregards the tyranny of time.
Possessor of a harsh and holy hand.
She flows through hills, the lilting of a lake.
Her features form new flowers, are laced in trees.
She rides the rain and worships on the wind.
Her tears maintain the essence of the seas.
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RICHES
Pick up the moon pearls in your path.
Be covetous with gold dropped by the sun.
Pluck the studded diamonds from the sky.
Ride the exultation of the lark.
When filled with every essence of the earth
take your riches down into the dark.
LEAVES
The leaves dance in a multitude of minds
numbed in the dark
and sighing.
The leaves lift through the burnished folds of flesh
flayed by the sun
and dying.
The leaves caress the grisly ghosts of men
lost in the limbo of an endless day.
But fruit glows on the decimated ground,
defying inarticulate decay.
Note: This poem relates to Gift of Green Fire, a story about an ecological disaster, where trees, ironically manipulated by man, provide a means of survival.
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MANDRAKE
The fields are flowing with an alien crop;
too ripe, too green. Unblemished in the sun.
“Let’s be realistic!” the scientists pronounce,
while genes dance willy-nilly through the dark,
defying reason.
Isn’t it time to dismiss the hit and miss -
dismiss the season?
Our logic is unruly
as the new crops - blithe yet blind -
shiver in cold hands of warning wind.
And then - unplanned - the mandrakes come
to seek the moonlit air.
Not merely man, but woman in the painful pack of leaves.
Corrosive incongruity. Mis-mated progeny.
A green sea sighing in great wind waves of despair.
One mandrake is uprooted with a scream;
mouth agape, while leaves are torn like limbs.
Accusing eyes close softly in the dawn,
and reason reels;
imposter, after all, from the shadowlands of dream.
THE HORSES
Fairy fingers spun from air
caress cold manes and tease the equine flesh.
Small voices whisper in the half-cocked ears.
The horses fly; fast figments of the night.
They are instinct. Demon-drawn;
compelled to flee trite territories of man
and enter inner earth, to gallop through the dark
to where the demons dance,
while man above, in madness, hears beneath his feet
the distant pounding of their hollow hooves.
Note: In folklore, if horses were found sweating in the morning, it was believed the fairies or ‘pharisees’ had been riding them at night.
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UNKNOWN
Shorn-off outcast.
Cankerous about your obdurate core.
What was the nature of your green-steeped youth?
When sap flowed like fire
and your head, spinning with the force of wind-raked leaves
reached to a blaze of blue?
Who stole your pulsing prime?
Curtailing with some burning blade
your lording of the sky.
What malevolence drew impotence through bark and branch,
encrusting them with parasitic growth?
You will not die.
And yet you stand grotesque, encased;
a failure to be scorned:
Abused by boys, who flaunt before your blind, unbending soul,
the crass forgetfulness of youth.
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THE WATCHER
The winds unleashed from the rain-pearled air
whirl into a woman’s face.
She is the cloud form of unnumbered years;
the watcher from a myth-encumbered race.
She is the matriarchy moving through the land;
the mother thrust aside by brutish man,
yet proffering still a great, eroded hand,
whose bones lie low across the wasted earth.
Her muscles move the mountains,
her breath bears up the sea.
Mortality is sculpted by the sand.
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SWAN
The swan, a pale emissary
has passed and heard her plea:
“Seek him, find him, tenderly bind him
and bring him to me.”
The swan, a figment of her need,
glides into the gloom.
Reality retreats. The woman wrestles
with deceptive depths; infinities of sleep.
The surface of the water weaves
where sky and river meet.
See, the man she draws from dream
is bowing at her feet.
TREE IN WINTER
Cloven fantasy;
unwieldy work of winter’s art.
Mist-mesmerised. Apart.
Yet charged with pagan power that scorns our elevation
of your green and trembling hour.
Your sudden winter shudder gives a moan of monarchy alone.
You sway - the misty martyr of the sapped and songless field,
as though in madness you would shake
and break our swaying cult of dreams;
scatter to the frozen winds
our low belief and fill the streams
with understanding found too late,
and force unfounded pride to slide and beg forgiveness at your feet.
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