Michele Leggott

7 POEMS FROM DIA (Auckland University Press. 1994)

h o n e y b e e 1 Apex you'll come to one fine morning set with that breakfast milk on the island steps a full feast of fresh air under your belt it's a small island, turtle in the channel rare for the latitude, the islanders touchy about a fragile domestic economy  Two of them bang away at an extension to the house dreamed up last night and being paid for in green dollars  The friday night pizzas are legendary if you know which boat to get  and there on the rockface is the aretalogers sign sans  me  fatiguer  ni  de  jour  ni  de  nuit- a little dairy factory by the name of Isis Lactans pumping out soft cheeses of a truely divine nature 2 We could all go some more could go down for it ourselves and come back on the Cream Run one quay at a time, mangos bagels wisdom from the markets where you lean on one elbow  after making love and begin to make the universe dooby doux to a tune that suits your ripening sense of history Going out for the makings, staying in to eat mouth to mouth, why was it lost most when we needed that contagion in the telling? There is still the special place on her head where they touch her for more of the story while back in bed a sleep of hands and hearts  is airing nectar in all the generous mouths 3 How beautiful in jandels o prince's daughter the motive bones of your finely dusted feet on the road to the cape and back many summers past small clips of paradise In the dark doorway the Fire Chief, a stir of silver buttons and a ceremonial axe as he walks into the picture again  His are the gifts you are learning to take from the ballerina plate piled high between you in all of his houses sometimes the regalia signifies, sometimes it's just a couple of beers over lunch watching your seventeen-year-old self descend from the tree with the big nest of epiphytic lillies to where he's waiting saying : Let's  go,  princess  4 To the north of paradise a high summer moon at four in the morning and I call out  the song of your body in the light of what is  before me  I know the precedents I'm looking for  the wise fire of intelligence in a body that wants to metabolise lightning  I want to get to the vineyard the river the mountain the city and the sea undivided by your attentions then I want to hammer out gamos everywhere among the beautiful appetising trees of those places So I get up in the dark and you call  Hey excelsa your salty shoulder first, sweet nicotiana next but most from the open window to this wide bed white scent from the tree of flowers And sleep?     5 Schluck-schluck perfect mind at work on perfect body at the confluence of two rivers called Melilot and stamp  What a day it's been salmon in the daypack at four thousand feet high dives and honeypots into those piscine deeps and a sweet precision of vocables throughout - We've got it all as the islanders say, the ins and outs the ups and downs, the map of the world on the bedroom floor lost fo  so long, for so long passed off as a hand to mouth myth among painters who travelled the length of the country to be close to its source  Look, the confluence of  two rivers, the deep relief of the map traversed hop skip jump and free fall into the art of love 6 Apices that melt you femina climbing the steps temple days and others minding children or hanging out the sheets  How transport is a word among vines - excelsa and two young roe looking on Carmel  Who would not forget her clear voice remaking paradox as the shadow - hunt closes in on the fabulous slopes of ellipsis : And I light hearers to you  There she is swallowed the sun and gives it back each morning in the bright window she's there on the tip of your tongue her bees working the red flowers that take you from the vine to fire as she contemplates another shift in the pronouns: 7 I am the boat of heaven rocking outside the orbit of the moon and the orbit of the sun I am the dancer on the plate the one in blue with a honey stomach full of delectable lies I am the diver and the baker rolling over and over in the dry grass which is most like rain I am the parabola, a crural bow strung across the single point of my dripping ascent I am the eater of trees, the drinker of sense and my name is the crown of a blue eye rising I learned to write these languages  It is my kiss on your mouth and there must be no fault in the transmission I am before you, I look after you, I am a slow boat rocking everything

Back  to  Index

Copyright Michele Leggott published with permission of the Poet. All rights reserved