Among the Barley

Among the Barley

Among the Barley

                           I
 
We met at the tail of a check-out queue,
and when she turned her head she spread
like blood through snowflakes, all melt and fire,
as my ripe tomatoes tumbled to the floor.
And when she bared her chamomile thighs,
her red-toed sunblaze, my body became
barley fields on fire. My frazzled ears roared.
My old house flared to fizz-burned bananas,
red meat frizzle-zings, the attic razed to hell,
and I knelt at the doorway singing High Hosannas.
 
                          
                           II
 
After she’d cut her doorkey and laid out
blueprints of her kitchen cupboards’ insides,
I felt deep-bosomed, big-bellied and wide
as a turnip field, days before harvest. 
I bought walking boots and walked through river-
wound groves. I bought allegories of birth
and death, framed them, and drilled them to
her wall. And how they fell. When she entered
a room eyes swivelled and bulged for her,
red crab-apples craving for the earth.

 
                           III
 
For you, I wanted to leaf and take root.
So I stood firm and pulled my lips full gape,
wanting to mouth apples. Uaugghh. I uaugghhed
nothing until it hurt. And then I surrendered.
Orchards of apples began to appear—  
pear-shaped, plum-coloured, pineapple-dappled.
My eyes turned seed, my veins fructosed,
and my mouth bloomed stem-twigs for sound
and wounded fruit for sense, gulping forth
a juiced-up speech, or merely talking apples.
 
                          
                           IV
 
I slap a second lick of banana dream gloss
on the back room’s walls while you measure
the cove for hanging your unframed mirror.
Soon we’ll discuss diaries, looking for
windows when we can next DIY together.
The forecast is for spells of lower pressure.
I finger-slick sweat from your pent shoulders
as the sun leaks onto the living room floor
and trickles down our thighs and thrawn limbs—
barley sheaves waiting for the thresher.
 
                           
                           V
 
We walk a line that curves from day
to day, often squiggly, higgledy-piggledy
as if etch-a-sketched by a sugar-rushed
two-year-old so that I find myself
rushing through a maze of malls, esplanades,
restaurants, barley fields, beds, lakeside
pathways, garden patios with sundials—
meeting points that blend and deepen
and brighten and bloom the way a room
looks bigger when you’ve been in it for a while.
 
                          
                           VI
 
We meant to make love on the stairs,
the deskchair, the windowsill, the throw
your sister bought back from Brazil.
Now we zigzag and busy-buzz by
one another like honey bees sniffing
pollen in the autumnal dusk-lit glare.
So let our love be watertight and let
the breeze blow through it. Let us be solid
oak and fluid. Let us be truth, let us be dare,
the swallow’s dive sculpted in rock, and air.