No Air and Anticipation
All evening I’ve tried to catch my breath,
a heaviness pervades. Opening windows
alleviates nothing, no breath to be caught
since that night I fell for you in ways I’d thought
not possible, over the wine we didn’t spill.
You have bedded down my waking thoughts
in a slumber so deep I may never come
again to appreciate the silk lining of a kid glove,
finding fingers shape softness. And as you say
my name for the first time the taste is new
and unfamiliar. When the heat breaks,
you’re still in my head, like the scent of perfume
that will not fade. In those small hours
your shadow claims the light of all that is natural.
From afar it comes like the smell of rain
in off the sea, with an urgency of waves
breaking you weaken at the thought
of it happening again, as naturally as heat
making its presence felt on the globe
of your palms, you spread your fingers
wide as water between two bodies
of land, trace boundaries, sea stacks ’n coves
on the bend of where paradise might
be. Your judgement clouds like a compass
that’s let moisture in, devoid of magnetic
field you falter, give way to the rhythm
of waves as though sirens in pursuit of kelp
and driftwood like lovers on a beach.
ANNE FITZGERALD is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and Queen’s University, Belfast. Her poetry collections are Swimming Lessons (Wales, Stonebridge Press, 2001), The Map of Everything (Dublin, Forty Foot Press, 2006) and Beyond the Sea (Co. Clare, Salmon Poetry, 2013). She is a recipient of the Ireland Fund of Monaco Writer-in-Residence bursary at The Princess Grace Irish Library, Monaco (2007). For more information see www.fortyfootpress.com.