Luke Fischer

Cathedral Cove at Twilight

Like an agnostic, reading
the mystics for the first time
you feel space turning inwards;

a touch of darkness
dyes the fabric of things
though there’s still a way to go

before you reach the chapters
on the soul’s night.
The headland watches

with the wind-hewn
features of an old recluse.
The wash and ebb of waves

loosens knots in the mind;
along with granules of sand,
draws hardened memories away.

The breeze runs its fingers
through your hair; the shore blushes.
You slowly detach like an unmoored raft…

A long blond braid of water
unravels past a mossy ledge
and splits against a pool

that slithers on—scales catching the late light;
under the limpid body, sulphur
and sand are chequered like a fossil.

Gannets glide on silence;
their wingtips decipher
the braille of wind.

One with the threads
of their flight,
you plummet into the sea.

Night

conceals branches behind curtains
         cuts out turrets and places
the shadow puppets against the sky

He pours liquid darkness
                                    through the windows
submerges our house like a shipwreck

Only in daylight are ghost stories
unbelievable      As   things   dissolve
you  make  out   shifting  faces     figures

Your housemates sleep
      cocooned in silence
   the hypnotist’s captives

Sinkers hang from your eyelids
The membrane
between space and dreams

starts to tear and lead is mixed
into the conductor of thoughts They
fail to connect like someone who arrives

at a bus stop and forgets where he’s going
Turned into a caterpillar
you crawl into a curled leaf

Dawn

After a difficult night
the alarm wakes him
early. He lifts himself
from the bed but not entirely
from sleep—his brain,
a half-formed crystal
still precipitating out of
the solution of dreams.

Hurriedly he dresses
makes his morning coffee
departs—only glimpsing
the generous spread of light
over rooftops, foliage, roads;
the transmutation of a neighbour’s
window. Yet

he feels the sun rise
on the horizon of his mind—
a pristine fountain
just beyond the city,
which trickles through
the undergrowth and
concrete channels
of his day.