These are poems I performed at the above event - so, here it is Jumping Free - written towards the end of a 10-year off/on relationship with a guy from Barbados. He eventually went back to Barbados to care for his aging mother with dementia ... long story.
Jumping
Free
Winding
track up the mountain
through the
forest of dusty pines.
I stare out
as if suspended,
my past
dragging behind.
I talked to
you, but you didn’t hear;
I waited for
you so long, but you fell behind;
I watched
through mists and windows
but my
picture faded and
you couldn’t
see me anymore.
The track
winds up, cutting through rock
I glimpse
the sky lapis blue and shiver in the shadow.
Is this it
at last? The time to jump?
No another
bend and another...
Above an
eagle circles,
as the clock
slows, as my life unfurls,
'like nothing ever mattered'...
I see it
coming now, the final bend;
all that’s
left is jumping...
Will my
orange wings catch the breeze;
float me
over the shimmering sea far below?
‘Run’, my
guide says, ‘run into the air,
and then sit
back and feel
Allah’s
breathe upon your face’.
See me there
drifting over the hills, hazed in blue;
time
shimmers and stops
as I swoop
over the pale turquoise lagoon.
Now I’m
swooning, the sky turns me upside-down.
Hold steady,
don’t flash back, time suspends
as I soar
over the sparkling water,
arc around
where the red crescent leads
to land
softly on the new road ahead.
Anna Meryt
13//5/2010
....................................................................................................
Cutting through eternity
The time of trees is measured
in rings
and rocks are stratified
in layers
Cut a slice of me
and see if my time
is visible there -
in brains and veins and bones
or will the search
for ordered patterns of time
kill me
Anna Meryt ©
May 2005
I think this got a runner up (or something) in a Forward poetry competion 20+ years ago
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