Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 5, Number 2. November 2022. ISSN: 2581-7094
Forest
Fragments
--- Gemma Parker
i
As usual, the forest forgets that
it has a job to do.
ii
Each shaking blue wildflower heeds
the wind.
iii
Nothing can be built in this
forest, but the forest still contains everything that has ever been built.
iv
A young boy climbs a fallen tree
with a rope in his teeth.
v
The forest is too cold to live in.
vi
Every fern frond is the same shade
of green – only the afternoon sun fractures them into bronze, ochre and quartz.
vii
The forest is terrifying and it
will make you ready.
viii
There is nothing profane about a
forest. It has no sides.
ix
In a forest, everything happened,
everything is still happening.
x
The forest does not trade in
negations.
xi
There is no version of you, in the
forest, that does not know what to do.
Turning to the River
An excerpt of this poem
was first published by the University of Adelaide as part of ‘Blooming Poetry’,
for which stanzas of poems were planted as seeds and grown from the earth
I take the steep path to the river
gripping a blue rope
I am knotted sinew
this morning a bark shrew
the river is glinting
with that gleaming, gloaming
dawn light, the pure
banishing light
the reeds are shivering
birds take off like dinosaurs
huge wings beating
heavy ancient machinery
pink becomes blue at the river
everything constricts
we go in to get coated in silver
the silver of river-waking
I think my body knows nothing
my body knew to come here
knew to step carefully to dive
into the cold milky river
this river is probably tears
probably blood the veined earth
is always secreting I’ll bathe
in it as if it is light
anyway if I could just reach
across to the island I think
you would know that I am ready
to believe you I wasn’t before
before I was sleeping, I had
a bad night, and in the morning
it was only the faintest whisper
the tiniest aspect of air-pressure
the smell of the clouds
the rumbling wind
that made me rise so early
and climb into the dawn.