a performance poem

We live close to the sky.
Its hot wet breath
gathers itself
on the mountainside,
flicks
clothes from the line,
lifts
wisps of our hair,
then tumbles itself
into storm, lumbers down
to the beach, and dumps its secrets
in the sea, while we
fill brimming cups of our eyes.
We live close to the sky.

There are those who see in our contentment
a kind of failure. (Disinherited gods; stunted visionaries).
I see no cause to invite abundance into my life
when I already have everything that I need.
I unravel these country roads
in my fossil-fuelled solitude, I follow them
back to the place we met, at the halfway interlude
between the furthest you could climb
on splintered lungs and dwindling time,
and my limited will to know that I
must reach the summit alone.
In the intimacy of this truth I fell for you –
that is, they always call it falling
but surely – we were rising
in love.

Now we live close to the sky.
And I fold these landscapes into my mind:
these hills slick with cloud-spit,
these sudden egrets spraying sky.

None of it exists outside of time
in this life of not-quite.

But I think this might be enough for me
if it is enough for you.
We live close to the sky.
We tend to a garden of blue.

Sarah Temporal

 

Sarah Temporal is a performance poet and poetry educator. She won the 2018 Nimbin Performance Poetry World Cup, and has featured at Sydney Writers Festival and Storyfest. She is the convenor of Poets Out Loud, an event and project platform for writers of all ages in the Tweed Valley region.

© 2019