Common or Garden Poets #11 – Kit Kelen inviting Angela Costi

 

inviting Angela Costi

 

fragments revised from ‘the village is a garden’ at Mesana

Paphos District, Cyprus

 

                                                   and I have something to tell you

                                                   which not even I must hear

                                                                     – Yiannis Ritsos

 

1

such an honest morning

 

sun has washed white

what is that tiny bird swings through

under vines in a courtyard glimpse?

 

it’s an all-day rooster

proclaims from tin shade

 

tiny lizards

to whom I’ve had no formal introduction

are faster than

call their colour 

 

a breathless hill’s

good for the heart

 

I go a little way on

at the edge of the village

come to an oak much older than me

that’s where I’ll seek advice

 




 

2

the olive

 

abundance, peace and glory

 

what lives in the olive

is just this season

 

a certain flit of feather, fur

say opportunity

 

wide boll of gnarl

our ages blur

 

flutter adjustment

in the branches

 

what lives in the olive

a thirst set aside

light throws itself at us

 

the old ones

writhe themselves around

 

all cleft

and strong with standing

 

like a dare to wait

and taste the fruit

 

it’s bitter now

but you can have my patience

 

let the blade be with the branch

let the shape be minded

 

sing

and leaf

is song too

 

a hill lives in the olive gnarl

whole skies have gathered 

 

rain fell

 

let this bark be shot of sun

twig fall to winter fire of night

 

the tree so many lives

it’s accident and cause we’re here

 

a wrestle with itself

frozen yoga seems

 

because we can’t see time

tree’s made of

 

bend with the breeze

as often laden

 

think calmly as the tree

 

 





3

a picture of the stillness

 

a gnarl of stump

could be alive

points its all directions

 

saw my first snake today

dusty black yay long

 

add this to the list

of those on the way

 

flies to me gathered

as movement as sweat

 

do I deny them hope?

surely I will lie down to die?

  

a breeze lives in the shade

flutter and the tree takes off

 

I walk like a ghost through this knowledge

nobody knows I am here

 



 

4

rising to all occasions

 

pigeons explode from an ancient tree

this happens now and then

 

there are other days

over the skysill

 

other worlds

deep in the heart

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