Melting Lead
I’ve heard it all my life. Pull up
A chair inside yourself and listen.
A gland in your neck will make
your eyes pulsate, bulge with malignant staring.
Pull up a chair inside yourself and listen. Listen
to a tale of lead hands melting.
A westerly with jagged teeth snaps a beech
In two. Lead hands melt inside its hollowed core.
A fallen tree sounds the air if ears will hear
its cracking bones. Leaden hands will cannibalise
the bellied trunk for firewood. Pull up a chair
inside yourself and listen as a fractured stump
wounds the earth, and wounded earth sifts root
from shallow ground. A pyre ablaze will burn
for days, a spectral beacon at the water’s edge. Lead hands
melted down to liquid silver pouring into the world,
a blister at its centre, cave bled to its heart. Pull up
A chair inside yourself and listen as your hollowed core
is filled with leaden hands, molten leaden hands
filling the empty centre at your heart.
Pull up a chair inside yourself and listen.
Eleanor Hooker was first published in Leave Us Some Unreality: New Writing from the Oscar Wilde Centre, Trinity College Dublin, and subsequently in The Shadow Owner’s Companion, February 2012