that dull fire red

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that dull fire red dawn gendered f

we hand-in-hand barely able to see

each other smile close in the murk

will magic heal the new wound and

birth the good grey baby day

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__________

©Marie Marshall

Sea Lions

I don’t often reblog stuff.

JanniStyles1

fairest minds we see

waves rolling strong former she

surfacing the fight

flailing hard to breathe

drowning often unbelieved

neath a stilled glass sea

(c) Janni Styles

View original post

first foot

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my doorway

lets in your first foot

– the house warms

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__________

©Marie Marshall

Another straight-up love thing

She sang to me, all about

moonbeams and evening,

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and what’s more we danced;

the coffee cups rattled applause,

their good old brattle –

……….. terpsichore! terpsichore!

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Someone wrote our names

on paper, folded them together;

she burned this, saying

that clinched it –

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we laughed like a pair

of wind-shifted bushes,

danced again, more applause.

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__________

©Marie Marshall

For the moon

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You unbuttoned my waistcoat

and laid your hand on my ribs.

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For warmth, you said.

For the moon, I replied.

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__________

©Marie Marshall

by cunning hands

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your adze dipped

into my heartwood

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where tree was

became your canoe

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by cunning hands

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__________

©Marie Marshall

your even brow

preach it

I see across to
your even brow

you have access to me

you’re green in winter
my watercourse

look to your own moon

that’s you
my only skyrock

do I detail you?

I sip your light
I sip you

am I your lair?

I see across
to your even brow

preach it
how my hand’s a wave
that parts a kelpfield

I’ve preached how
your hair’s my blessed night

breathe me

dawn you
oh I preach

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__________

©Marie Marshall

 

She sleeps symmetrical

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She sleeps symmetrical

her limbs parallel her eyes

and mouth closed to colour

I kneel with a stone of philosophy

and try it to her cheek so

that when she wakes

and the sun bloodies us

we’ll be gold to each other

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__________

©Marie Marshall

Two hundred and seven words. 30

very moment of sand, every tiny flame that kisses, or burns when the wind snatches it, each word taken away, she’s a second-to-second savant, and looking at her lover the girl thinks (it all being too loud to say): I don’t give an Etruscan toss where she started, just that she’s here now, hair cut out against the sky, look bold, smile stealing up a flash wolf, a thousand million therefores, brittle in my arms, sharing the wearing away of the sand though sometimes outpacing it enough to excuse me for the breathlessness I feel anyway, hidden, revealed, true, a game, a deadly seriousness, the found beryl in a box of cheap glass though its setting is base, a sip of a new and sharp alcohol with each wary buss, my fingers ploughing her hair to delve the shape of her head, wand, knife, an arrangement of cryptic objects on a tray, the sole plant that grows its own slant in my garden, she wrests my sense from me and with it an entire vocabulary but no matter because she brings a new one filled with sly promise, sly, sly and high, sly and high and salient fit to murder my old and birth in my beginning

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__________

©Marie Marshall

this young woman

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this young woman

her skirt misfolded –

a broken china cup

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__________

©Marie Marshall