Glass
The
desert marshals sand
in warfare.
Hustles it
dust driven
into the compressors of aircraft
whose engines eat
heat.
Fired,
the sand becomes
glass:
a blown heart holding hot
steel in
its hollow hands.
It breaks
the heart
sends daggers of
glass to burrow bright
back in sand:
desert.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Rust
Steels
wants to be iron oxide
I’m told by a scientist:
‘We dig it
up and beat it
into steel, but it doesn’t last.’
In
each shiny sheet
polished rod
kettle, can, car and
plane
train;
foundations of a
thousand
high-rises
sky-scraping, cloud-grazing
there is
a ruddy heart
that rusts
lusts to be itself again. To
corrode,
collapse, return to
iron
its flavour like blood
beating
under our feet.
* Sarah Hilary is an award winning writer whose fiction has appeared in a range of publications including Smokelong Quarterly and The Fish Anthology 2008. A column about the wartime experiences of her mother, who was a child internee of the Japanese, will be published in the Spring '09 edition of foto8 magazine.
Good to know that your poetry is as exciting and moving as your prose.
Well done!
Bill West
Excellent poems, Sarah! That combination of rust and blood is especially powerful – I can taste it.
Frances
Thank you, Bill, for that lovely response. I was very anxious about trying my hand at poetry! Sarah
Thank you, Frances!
The link to Sarah's blog is now live – apologies for earlier problems
Love that sand-to-glass poem and those dagger shards of the glass heart… and the desert planes… neat stuff SH.
D
Thanks, D!