TIME POEM IN ALL PARTS

By Mali Delargy

and time goes by like colours

I think about it in my head and I think

our bodies instead of time

withering and gaping it shouts

TIME HAS COME FOR ME and

we are forked mutant creatures

as crude as the vinegar parsnip

fucking and struggling, lopped

skinny legs and fat tops

I think it is half-two on a Saturday and

WHAT WILL IT DO TO ME

a stalactite trying to make a column 

before the grass turns to hay, and I 

am harvested by time. I cower over my organs

harrowed by fear of the lump.

at that point WINTER was

defenestrated

and Hot Spring took its place

slinking between sky and sea,

and in the middle

a purl that would

leave the guilty hand

uncooked.

THE FEAR returns as the

tight skin on my face

cracks and bleeds

the sky crowns a troughed field

scythe terminator

and in this clarity

summer 

sees itself through 

the eye of spring.

this miserable turn –

thick-skinned and fat faced,

cold, concrete head –

a tractor glugging sludge, big

birds scavenging the seeds. You know

WINTER blows its nose and

out of the broken tissue

comes the reticent spring. 

Photo by Mali Delargy