Title: Sport 39: 2011

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2013, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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Sport 39: 2011

Jenny Powell

page 182

Jenny Powell

Taking Keats to Paradise

He was waiting in Glenorchy,
hunched in a coffee shop corner
bone thin, his eyes drowning,
chest caved in, his breathing tight.

Time was against us. Around
him the shadow of age hungry
for youth and a lover’s heart,
behind him the blood red sun

beginning to set, the black
silhouette of mountain peaks,
towering, remarkable, the lake’s
icy tongue advancing.

Keats in the passenger seat
of our car, grasping at sips of air,
the windows down, autumn
and evening fanning his high fever.

When the road ran out of seal we
were sent a sign; 12 kilometres
to Paradise, no exit. Our low slung car
jolted on every rut and stone, on his

lips the red of beaded bubbles. We
darted through the changing scenes
of near meadows, winding streams,
moss that hung from ancient branches

page 183 of wild beech, at Diamond Lake
the last finger of sun burning
and beckoning across the gleam.
Keats sinking to drowsy sleep,

his face the pallor of powdered
snow, we slowed the car and bathed
his brow, passing through the River
of Jordan ford, opening the Gates

of Heaven where fantails flickered late
in falling light, singing their plaintive
chant, their high requiem in Paradise
under the first bright star of night.

Life’s Longing

She was guarding us from death,
gliding down the worn linoleum
corridors on her sheet of ice,
appearing in the wrong ward.

Her face, snowflake pale, freckles
fainting into her tissue skin,
her hair the fading red
of a drowning sun.

We all sat. Backs to the wall
in a patchwork of armchairs,
pinned to the day’s routine,
treading time in our glass slippers.

page 184 She watched from the door,
the shutters of her sight half closed
but her visions clear.
She saw my eyes whispering.

They would hurry her back
through the locked door, raise
serious questions about how
she appeared as if the answers

would grow in our wasteland.
Before I circled the drive
to search for the hidden gate
she was there, scarcely brushing

the air when she moved
to my side, giving me a touch
of light and life’s longing.
They dragged her away

into the padded scream
of her own shadow.