Abegail Morley

a song of innocence

i spread outward
in startled spears of light
that dart through trees like
silver fish
the birth and death of constellations
glimmer in my hand

hours spring like gazelles
from my fingertips, leap
like hail, rebound ricochet, fragment
boundary lines, all lines.
i’m wrought in curves,
shrapnel, debris, unspooling time

icy streets thaw beneath my footfall
their battle scarred cross hatched skin
etched in broken masts of grass,
tallow stems,
my child’s limbs flailing,
cast an aching wide net
across a shrinking sea.

.

.

Goldmining

I have mined the coal dark night for stars, for stars to kindle your hearth,
draw you close to the warmth of my love, my love in the cast
off coat of winter.

I have sought diamonds in threadbare pockets,
I have plunged the old rooms of the earth, I have scoured the dirt
for latent seeds that could give birth to trees, unearth
the boats at the brink of our dreaming, the waters swelling between our ebbing.

A husk of light if just a husk, I’d cleave
to the breeze like a seed, sing its vespers over the seas,
wash upon your shore, draw the ink black tide like a curtain, weave
a womb skin when all thins to whittled white hairs,

when all grows cold and cords are severed
and bare leaves fall in silent consummation,
their brief flash gold more precious
than any shining stone casket stored
like sleeping bones in the earth’s deep core.

.

Suzy Kopliku lives in the Midlands. Her works have been featured in Sentinel Literary Quarterly and Rise up Review. She has recently published a poetry book entitled “We Ran Until the Grass Grew Ragged.” She is inspired by sunlight, nuance, liminal spaces and fresh coffee.