Poet-Today | Fiona Lovatt

He. Flies Away

This is the reality

when the dust has blown

across the morning streets

and traffic passes, horning,

that he lies against the wall.

His hand cups his cheek.

His legs are tucked up

in the curl of sunnah sleep.

The other hand, resting      

on his hip, in the sun.

Behind the headlines.

he smiles, in this, his cold,

and quiet death. A boy,

on interlocking pavement,

sixty days before elections.

He, with that smile

and that blessed posture,

flies away.

Other Dreams

In the basement of the high-rise
in a space big enough for a thousand prisoners
where no prisoners are ever held
save for the prisoners of wealth
the slaves of brand and style

Water flows from all the showers and sinks.
The rivers of grey water sing like rivers
in pipes that dog leg down, across
lacing the lyrics of suds and soap falling
with gravity's certain laws out to the sea.

In the basement of this high-rise one listens
for birds that do not come. No sun glistens
on the dancing, dappled, burbling streams
that chuckle now of other dreams.

A time to wait

I am waiting outside the door of the kiln.
I am waiting beside the insulated furnace
for a mother to emerge from salty grief.

The firing of her empty-vesselled self
is my pain too (is every mother’s pain)

and there is only a tiny hole to peep

at the melting cones that measure time,

and heat in the roar of double burning.

Her tears glaze the beauty onto form

and she will never be porous again.

Everything will hold, include, contain,

pondered, remindered, loving pain,

and she will shine.

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Fiona Lovatt has been exploring artistic expression across a range of genres for the last four decades, primarily as a teacher-practitioner in Aotearoa NEW Zealand and Nigeria.