
Gillie Harries
GILLIE HARRIES POEMS FOR POETRY PLUS (SEPT 2021)
HEALTH
Garden of grasses
Susurrations of air
Inspire well being
MEMORY
My Mother’s garden
A profusion of effort
Sifting light shadow
HOPE
The year turns to dark
Seeds are setting change, hunker
For our endurance
JOURNEY
Birdsong, some sense of
Drift and fall toward rebirth
Some sense of circle
GROWTH
Breathe in to being
Embrace transformations gift
Stretch toward the light
DRAGGING MY HEART IN A SUITCASE
I’m dragging my heart in my suitcase,
Thanking some God for the invention
Of the little wheel and fortune, of discovery.
I’m dragging the stone too
From it’s wave-cut platform of repose
Upon Pwll Du bay, the millions of aeons
Taken to erode, smooth
That limestone to the perfection
Of humanity’s idea of aorta and ventricle;
A simple steadfast valentine.
I search every beach, every possible place
For a decent heft of a heart and,
This is it, lying in wait
Lying in weight for me.
I climbed the Bishopston valley
Crossing that brackish pool
With the companionship
Of the man and woman, that boy
Who swam to the distant rocks
Swam them today, in a poignant lone
Determination through push and lift of wave.
The friends who search, for that self same
Art in life, a poetry of form
We struggle to decipher, yet decipher.
I wrapped my stony heart
In Cleopatra’s head-wrap
Hauled it to the London train
Departed Swansea
With sweet embraces and the promise
Of a future time to gather to the light.
It sat steadily silent
All through green hills and river courses
In the golden hour
The music of valley voices .
Only I heard its muffle of
Sonorous ticking- Take me home,
Take me home.
A kindly masked driver
Lifted the bulk unbidden.
And finally here far from that crescent
Of perfection, the licking tides, cuttle fish
Skeleton and seaweed
It graces my garden and stills
My breath, with its memory of water’s power
To heal and to reshape us anew.