These four poems are new poems written since the publication of Rebecca’s last collection In My Days and In My Sleep. They are previously unpublished.
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Hearthside then breathing
Sleeping close to the floor
those nights when a broken bed
had been dismantled
and its replacement
rested on a nearby wall
awaiting parts
I thought of the moon
emboldened by cold night air,
the small windows of yellow
across a distant township,
and those raindrops that stayed
on my window past the time
of their falling- everything
deep and blue in a world
outside this room –
Then later, high up on the mattress
of the bed and feeling the base
through a fault in design,
I thought of waking
to morning light or daybreak
and how it would come
from these intermissions of closeness,
my hands earlier, capable of touching carpet
now, my body raised, having only themselves.
Rebecca Kylie Law reading 'Hearthside then breathing'
………………..*****
Secrets and Loves
“shadowy, shadowy,
yet unbroken”
……….– .Edgar Allen Poe
In my small garden, sunlight
which is not from the token
the mist settled on the mountain
but seconds the light
of waking, there shadowy,
a pillow in which
dreams lie, the breath
of stillness- where
the mist settled on the mountain
and the lamp shines
upward on the white ceiling
morning had come again
in my small garden, glinting
halfway through winter
a brightness to the token
not in the trees its warmth
but of a base intensity
– one fresh sheet upon a bed
in summer –
that way, symbol for memory
could be cast upon the sky
as a white jagged stone in which
the mist settled on the mountain
and my dreams are the shades of
my pillow, the breath of stillness
warmed to the rise and fall
of sleeping, a togetherness in this
my small garden, plants glinting
in winter sunlight- “who would
buy our wonderful morning, the
sweet red roses too”-
Autumn leaves
The flowers graveside
were bright enough.
Yellow ones, some only buds
standing past the others
and moving; yet lower and full,
orange, red and pink blooms
bunched close with criss-crossed
stems, green and vanishing
in an embedded vase, rectangular,
narrow and boxed in copper.
In sunlight, that diagonal
shaft from the Right side:
the angels were not sleeping.
And in that morning
after rain, an echoing birdsong
carrying its clear notes
whilst so many skies
held onto an exact blue-
baby, early April
– or at least, the first weeks.
At night, in the Cathedral
two six-tiered candelabras either side
of a stone altar, low to
high, left to right, right to left.
The heart of shades, annexes,
unlit aisles, rows, rows of
wood benches, rails at our
feet to kneel on: after everything,
our wakings and our sleep.
The songs we could sing
with the guitarist in darkness
at our side, of apology and
love of the light. O constant.
And the two children
playing make-believe in a next door
garden, falling in turn
wounded and rolling
in fake agony, disbelief.
Whilst the older person
in a chair in sun
misses the place in her eyes
that was once reflected.
Yet the diagonal light
from behind clouds
and just after dusk,
the sound of approaching stars.
………………..*****
Summer, January
That the magnolia flowers, in falling,
had fallen on steps seemed one
of two things: the first, lovely
or wouldn’t it be nice to walk
there, up or down the
stone walkway dividing a road
from a cloister, the tree itself
overshadowing and secondly or
is it, lastly, how perfectly sad.
Later, sculpting my pink candle
with a chipped kitchen knife
I restored its cylindrical shape
and lit the blackened wick
outside in the courtyard.
It was after six and again
those dark shadows lowered
their angel weight upon
the boxed garden and slab
tiles while the wind took
to moving through the new plants.
Watching the candlelight shift
from side to side I saw how the
cradle came about, as though
descended from these pleasant
and sad vignettes. And in that,
the darling and uttermost beautiful
taking rest. I said “goodnight”
in blowing it out, leaning over
the tip with a cupped hand
and then some other things as well.
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Rochford Street Review 