In Cold Dimensions
I study the lives on a leaf: the little sleepers, numb nudgers in cold dimensions
A strange way to see.
A stranger’s way.
Her garden is an exhibition
with lit rooms, masterpieces,
and her rooms are parterres;
the shape and size of their levels
calculated to the soil-grain,
the spaces between shadowed
gnomons; those data-breaks
called seasons hold
hallmarks and prints:
temperature’s drafting.
She explains that there are masters
as there are spadesmen,
that both are speculators;
that the gruff grafters
who break soil, sieve weed,
are the salts of creation. Yet
that is not the actual work—
this arises by intangible
skill, by flaw, flawed
experiment even, and her own
interventions. The stranger:
she must always be welcomed.
These then are her gardens.
Her four-shadowed sundial.
Scent of snow on the breeze.
Sun pawing on your shoulders.
Ripe buds quelling colour
before they broadcast leaf
as if to foreshadow winter.
A strange, constant season.
The moon sails in a wrack
of steady cirrus and sleet.
On the lip of that world
she turns to take your hand.
Now, from her black soil,
storytellers and artists
begin to erupt: cramoisy
abstracts from peony and poppy,
dripped inks of algae
igniting on a dew-pond;
butterfly narratives
of flight, where they settle
to sip, unfold wings
on illuminated parchment
on a comparison of palettes,
on the wherewithal of pattern.
There, come her rich fables
in which lacewings balance
against ground-level winds:
the viewless khamsins,
zephyrs and haramattans,
that sway towers of digitalis;
and in the foxglove mouths
humble-bees move
edgily at their easels;
dragonflies, hummingbirds
freeze and spurt above oils,
histrionic, in counter-worlds.
Now are her apprentices
to works in progress:
under the pearl pond’s surface
bent brushes of fly larvae
on canvas below a lily’s pad:
two poles of a planet –
one in loom, one in radiance –
half-conceiving of the other;
a toad hunkers over them,
a levitating Brahma,
lax tutor of the green school
of watercolour, of water.
Here, her miniatures move
into sight: the eye delves
hinterlands where the unmanaged
survive under a slew of brick
lobbed by the first gardener.
Lever the frore mortar
to parallel cities of red ants,
woodlice, gaunt generations
of black frost and feelers,
unnoticed deaths, languages,
births, ice architecture.
Their great roof falls back.
At length, among the etching
blades of spear and couch
grass, the factions of colour
freeze to clear light.
A solitary, strange season.
In her lit outline
the garden shows a wall,
then a gate to the space
where she will let you
stand apart from yourself.
At the lip of the world.
She releases your hand.
*David Morley ’s new book is Enchantment. His poetry has won 14 awards. 'In Cold Dimensions' is from his previous collection The Invisible Kings (a PBS Recommendation.) His ‘writing challenges’ podcasts are among the most popular literature downloads on iTunes worldwide. He writes for The Guardian and Poetry Review.