Exuberance and a girl called Kimberley
I want to be generous as my feet
are firmly planted in clay and I’m in danger
of disappearing into a big hole;
my house is made of diamond-cut
glass and I can be as rash
and foolish as a girl called Kimberley.
Suppose, impatient for death, I dreamed
of the night sky, saw myself
as the goddess Nut, swallowing
and birthing the sun each day.
What if I commissioned a blue and gold
face creation for all the world to see.
I’d regret it too, one second
after the fifty-sixth star was done.
Kate Noakes divides her time between Paris and Caversham, Berks. She is a Welsh Academician and her most recent collection is The Wall-Menders (Two Rivers Press). This is her website.
Idle musings
I imagined an intruder
past midnight up the street
but it was just a worried mind
foxed by far too little sleep.
I looked to left and then to right
poised for the knockout fight
when a fireball caught my gaze –
a meteor that wouldn’t
douse the flames that trailed it down to earth.
The Milky Way is close tonight
I could’ve touched it if my sight
had not betrayed me yet again.
I almost dissed it for a cloud
but everything was etched so plain
against the blackest sky
and in-between and all about the Milky Way
bright stars and planets on display
as constellations yet unseen
came to life – what could this mean?
Underfoot the earth shook
I took a second and third look
to check if what I saw
was luminescent dust or cloud
that shook out stars like raindrops, proud
and with my arms outstretched I wondered how
they got the shape of sword and plough
all creation taking place
a shooting star routed by gravity
fallen far beyond our reach.
Is star placement really random
spoken into being with abandon
or are planets without number bred
how did Mars end up so red?
Julian de Wette was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, New York. De Wette worked as an Information Officer for the United Nations in New York, Windhoek and London for over twenty years. In 1993 he was appointed Deputy UN Representative to Kazakhstan, where he established a base for the UN’s countrywide operations. He later worked for United Nations Volunteers in Geneva and Bonn. His novel, A Case of Knives was published by Random House, Cape Town in 2010.