Guest Poems

Thoughts on Crater 308

…io nol feci Dedalo…
Dante’s Inferno 29:116

It is freedom we sail to. Or this is our story. Who gets to fly
when the winds are not hers to control? Yet, there is no
coastline, nor even a sea. Only mind. And, when the wax

melts, pesanteur. In the dancing, we break from our
flatlands to conquer the vertical: bird, child or fountain
finding a way to mark time. Then laugh, to be out of it:

time can’t mark us. Like the circle of women who lift up
their feet as they turn, we can imagine a bronze held
in stasis. A chord from the phorminx is sounding…

can’t sound, in this medium. Dressing the oak tree
in bridal white flitters, I am always the bridesmaid, never
the ant who carries its thread to the heart of a sea shell.

Spiral that never unwinds. It’s a riddle. Solve it, you find
me. Saw from a fish-spine. Constructing the compass.
If the partridge won’t fly, is she weightless? I stand

in my crater: lost wax. If you go to the far side, you see it.

Amongst the Rubble

from a photograph by Lee Miller

All colour is bleached from the landscape.
Only grey dust, ash falling, dereliction.
The children sit in the rubble, face in hands,
horrified that their homes have gone.
The boy, eldest of the three,
is creased with despair.
It is September, 1940, London has suffered nightly raids.
This was the street they played in
kicking a ball, rolling a hoop.
Their eyes cannot focus on the destruction.
A word they don’t yet understand –
depression – is weaving its way into their being
like the dust covering their boots,
seeping into their clothes.