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Cover by JanK

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The Artist's Good Faith

The overgrown fence has its calling
No need to move it afield,
or behind the church.

The soft territory of women stays small.
Light threading leaves denser than loss.
See the peonies larger than my fist?

No fear of what prowls on the other side.
Morning glory encroaches my dying hour
attracting those unmanned prayers.

Something holy haloes the milkweed choir
and I realise, this is the place to fall heavy.
Where men pass by with nothing to say. Grace?

Great divide, I had given up on the world,
but all these pheromones to court one loner?
Now, I shall think of you as the exception.

Sudden flowers in the existential crowd.
And today, I should paint you
— before you leave.

Waking With Crows

Without you, these valleys,
forget their gold, their hours
paling with the plough,
the picturesque ideal dissipates
as soft bodies of dandelion clocks.

Time is lost against the grain of us,
in this field, we autumn early
brown sycamores and smoke
a makeshift prayer above the tombstones,
our backs turned away from death.

And in the glen, the loyal horses labour,
as if this is what we do, learn to love
the world's untuned instruments,
the way the dress of a quiet woman
catches the attention of a lonely man.

Inheritance

Here is how we move,
between walls and gardens,
counties and continents,
searching for fragrance
between boughs, a blossom
cupping the rain of childhood.

A view that goes past the living,
beyond faded linen on the clothesline,
languages utter of heritage
you carried so far around
the circumference of a dining table.

And across its diameter,
even when touch is a myth,
the record player feels
your travelling lament,
the mahogany piano caught
in exquisite summer light,
— still remembers all our songs by heart.

Patient Waters

Have you seen the soft green willow
weeping at the edge of things?
The water unbroken,
even by its own reflection.

Soon, there will be a disturbance
of two swans, parting glass waters
even Monet did not capture,
and a sleeping hound
amongst scattered apples.

Dear life, I have lost as a writer,
but here, in the perfumed waiting room
is my great consolation.

And he who walked away before
the painting of lilac vistas was dry,
has missed his earthly reward.

Like all the absent ones
doing it solely for the grand prize,
their eyes already empty of the next world.

Calm

Letter To The Heartland

The feeling is a country
where none are foreign.
How far have you ambled
along this ruddy-faced earth,
till her expression resculpts
your tender soles into a labour
you wake to, with both hands open?

Did you tell her you longed
madly for her seasons?
That her scent never once left your body?
How when you lost your way,
her ritual of flowers opened your chest
to softly pounding rain.

Wild things come and go on the wind
crossing continents and stricken seas,
molten traumas of the heartland,
wounded, yet still laying together.
Two commas interrupting death.
– an exquisite pause for breath
in the same unmade bed.

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Vikki C. © 2023