Poem
Jo Bell
LIFTED
LIFTED
LIFTED
The land says – come uphill: and water saysI will. But take it slow.
A workman’s ask and nothing fancy –
Will you? Here’s an answer, engineered.
A leisurely machine, a box of oak and stone;
the mitred lock, the water’s YES.
We’re stopped. The bow bumps softly
at the bottom gate, and drifts.
All water wants, all water ever wants,
is to fall. So, we use the fall to lift us,
make of water its own tool, as simple
as a crowbar or a well-tied knot;
open up the paddles, let it dam and pucker,
swell and with it, lift us like a bride, a kite,
a wanted answer, breath no longer held
or like a boat. We’re on our way
and rising. Water rushes in like fools;
these tonnages that slip across the cill,
all dirty-bottle green and gathering,
the torrent rushing to release itself, a giddy hurl
then slower, slow until it ends in glassy bulges,
hints of aftermath: a cool and thorough spending.
Wait, then, for the shudder in the gate,
the backward-drifting boat that tells you
there and here are level, an imbalance
righted. Ask of it – water, help me rise
and water says I will.
© 2014, Jo Bell
Jo Bell
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1967)
Jo Bell is a unique force in British poetry, bringing a large personality and boundless energy to both writing and promoting it. She is a poet and performer with a blog, a website and a newly reissued book. She runs an immensely successful web-based project called 52 and declares that her main work is ‘connecting other poets’. Her various projects include collaborative work, poems for public sp...
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Poems of Jo Bell
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LIFTED
The land says – come uphill: and water saysI will. But take it slow.
A workman’s ask and nothing fancy –
Will you? Here’s an answer, engineered.
A leisurely machine, a box of oak and stone;
the mitred lock, the water’s YES.
We’re stopped. The bow bumps softly
at the bottom gate, and drifts.
All water wants, all water ever wants,
is to fall. So, we use the fall to lift us,
make of water its own tool, as simple
as a crowbar or a well-tied knot;
open up the paddles, let it dam and pucker,
swell and with it, lift us like a bride, a kite,
a wanted answer, breath no longer held
or like a boat. We’re on our way
and rising. Water rushes in like fools;
these tonnages that slip across the cill,
all dirty-bottle green and gathering,
the torrent rushing to release itself, a giddy hurl
then slower, slow until it ends in glassy bulges,
hints of aftermath: a cool and thorough spending.
Wait, then, for the shudder in the gate,
the backward-drifting boat that tells you
there and here are level, an imbalance
righted. Ask of it – water, help me rise
and water says I will.
LIFTED
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