Gifts

And these were your gifts, these

five bright stones. I count them

dying of love. I come into your room

still counting. One is brown,

it is the earth, the pitted

growing-old earth, the body of you.

Awkward-shaped, it is smooth with river's work.

I hold it roughly. It gentles into my palm, a breast,

a brown n****e, it touches my tongue, now.

 

Another reddish. Moon-blood. The secret well

of life that leaves you.

This is not death, the red stone murmurs

blood-tide queer rustlings. Red ochre. Red strains of silt.

Vein-valves so red they are almost blue.

 

A third, tinged green and gold, the gift of autumn.

A slow, rich, heaped harvest. Neither spring cruel

nor summer foolish, the hills sodden

with early rains and the late grain more yellow than yellow.

Mature, the early birds have gone, a slow procession of us

gypsies, laughter-heavy, wends its evening way

collecting autumn gradually into our baskets...

The leaves fall into your hair.

 

The fourth is round and cream. It is a bride.

Not the bride you were but the bride of a night

still sleeping. Not cream satin

but the cream rising frothy and cool in the bucket

the farmer tasting it slowly and nodding,

knowing all there is to know about cream

knowing that cream against clean steel

is a truth he need not explain

knowing that cream gives him a reason

for his toil.

A separator miracles it

into a smaller can and he whistles.

 

Five had no colour, no special tone, no clue

but waited like a long hard seed, clear and clean

like plasma, like egg-white, like jelly-fish

like what odd children examine

long after school's out. They know bright colours

are fools, only fools wear them.

The first scientist to isolate life will see this

in his tube and marvel. This is death, it lives

in my loins and we drink it across the table,

a gift, last of the five

and leave empty glasses.

 

Reviews

[EMF]

I have to agree with Ron. This Poem leaves me unsettled. But I know why. It is the time to come. For that reason I'll embrase it. As a view of life it is an affermation and it leaves a wry smile. I'll keep coming back to this one. As it should be

[Ron]

This is a deep and intense work, powerfully worded. It is unsettling for me at times but I cannot define exactly why. Poems of this nature require and provoke deep thought and time to digest. Not a read for the lazy but valuable and provocative for the thoughful. Images conjured by this work disturb and it was meant to be so I suspect. Recommend that this work is stored in your WC library for reference. Words sound like hammers striking an anvil. Classic Thurston!