Gillie Harries

GILLIE HARRIES POEMS FOR POETRY PLUS  (SEPT 2021)

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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.

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