All poetry copyrighted by Eleanor Rees

Extract from A Red Moon  

I break the top from the cathedral

and it comes,

oozing steam

cream,   champagne,

a thick cloud on the ground, 

is a cake now, a castle, an island,

a ship, a table,  pip in an apple, an eye,

an overweight seal on the edge of the tide. 

It loves me I think 

heavy under sheets

of water-clogged cloud. 

The city is a man.

      He raises

       terraces, parks,

      streetlight eyes

to see moon simmer on paving skin. 

He walks.

I cling.

He wants to take me home

to sleep stretched over the shore

to fall,

shorting,

hot and sweet

to leave me surly

but settled in the street: 

breath in the night, three stars,

      ice at toes, a haze

of streetlamp orange and fumes

and this road is a gate

it seems, that leads

to the other side of town like an arrow

and burns –

the flames

standing up from yellow hyphens

that mark the tarmac,

joining its thinking into streets and suburbs.

Fire burns   fire burns

 

                  in this skin

      in a car engine

                  in the threshing blue of the sea - 

            across the town from here,

      sun leaps into deep plum distance

            and a full-shadow midnight white

raze and cut of moon

      on the well-lined multi-storey  roof

      where lamp lit eyes

blink now at bubbling rain-sky,

      fat-laden midriff-spinning

end of the ocean

end of an evening rain. 

      Thinking of love

      momentarily pass to you 

stood absent in shadow

stood absent in the park

stood absent in the dock 

or you absent in the cemetery

where a granite wall, smooth and shiny dark,

                              is a top hat

balanced on the edge of the quarry 

- they took the sandstone

from this furrow

spooned it north into brick and mortar- 

mausoleums

stone angels:

a spring

levels from the rock

pours its wetness over mulch and moss

of autumn passed

as night irradiates with moon,

statues,

arms aloft,

catch unseen, the past: 

a sailor sings calypso

heard at the docks,

tail-coated gentleman

      is lost in fog,

and a child in a nightgown

      runs into town

            cotton wet on thin legs

                  she slips quick into

this cross-hatched night:

servant girl carries laundry,

butler waxes railings with shoeshine.

In a carriage without a driver

a thin black horse plumed and warm

draws a hearse of white bones

to the burial ground. 

The light is hot. 

The city is burning up

with fires that have passed

or should have passed

but linger

gold at a touch. 
 
   

Night River 

East to west, west to east,

wetness crawls 

the promenade wall.

Oil and chemical, salt and tar: 

the night is in my throat. 

I consume distances

at the edge of the river, 

three am, solitary

held only by the rain and the sky. 

The wind’s touch is courageous. 

The stars are stags,

antlers pointed at each new shore  

sailors discover

far from here, in some sunny waters. 

I open to it like a mouth 

and sense her shining

full height on the horizon, 

as if the horizon is a ledge

she balances upon, 

and hovering I rush to her,

her starriness, her electric pulses 

that beckon, she widens: 

a giantess on the sea,

a woman of light and frantic white. 

I immerse myself in her thighs.

Her whiteness, her size. 

I am her: the sea is a boat.

We ride until the dawn. 
 

Parkland  

Skating through trees,

you could break your neck on the moon. 

Like a paper doll you expand your body on the breeze

shadow after shadow. 

These versions of you hesitate, sit down,

climb trees, play Frisbee, give birth. 

There is nobody else in the park but you,

reclining on benches, naked, smiling, 

running between branches, distances,

mending ship’s sails on the dilapidated bandstand - 

you make rope in the avenues between cherry trees,

weave it round the pedestals of statues. 

You wear a crinoline and row armoured carriers across the lake,

swans at your ankles like terriers. 

You break your neck on the moon: 

exercise horses on the sandy track looped around the edge of the park,

deliver laundry to old women in houses with broken windows. 

You lie in the grasses in the small hills beside the streams,

touch yourself whilst looking at the sky. 

You run naked in darkness across the open parkland,

starlight still wet on your back. 

 

On shore 

Several hours of sunset

and the bells rang: 

cockles

in a boiling pan 

out across the bay. 

Inland, in a small room

tired in her bed  

she wraps warm legs

around her lover 

and cries. 

 
All poetry copyrighted byEleanor Rees