Darla Mottram - Four Poems
FIVE RECURRING NIGHTMARES
I.
not knowing when the dawn will come,
I open every door; one door,
to be sure, which, when flung open
reveals a likeness of itself,
the likeness itself a door
of sorts—I open—yet again
myself—the thing I can’t escape:
the future the past incarnate.
I do not want you to touch me.
II.
I wake to find I’m not
awake—I’ve descended deeper
into the dream, what use is self-
awareness when selves shatter &
deceive, I think I’m on the cusp
of understanding understanding
is a crumbling precipice I’m not
meant to leave—
III.
I walk around inside the mouth of the cave for years.
one day I venture to the lip.
the world is bright and jagged, and full of holes.
I can almost see the future, a shifting canopy of leaves.
my eyes greedy for texture, detail, dimension.
I almost suspect I am a thing meant to brush up against other things.
oh to be so exposed!
the past clutches me.
I do not wish to be known.
inside the cave are many echoes.
lives I entertained, let go.
IV.
I look at anyone a little too long & they
reveal themselves—
not people at all but faces
beneath which
that other, endless face
lurks—
not people at all but premonitions,
a feeling following me
a knife at my throat
V.
the thing goes only so far
before turning back on itself,
becoming once again
what it always was.
a hole in the world
that’s your whole world.
THE POEM FAILS
to explain why it matters
is impossible, is why
I need the poem to allow
for the shatter
I tell my therapist
not for the first time: I want to honor
what’s broke
no: silver linings, phoenix rising from ashes, lemons turned lemonade
no: recovery narrative
the poem fails
to make understandable
what isn’t—
I don’t want to fix it
I just want to hold it
I WAS WATCHING THE OSPREY
gliding along the tree line a smooth long nothingness & then—
if I’d blinked I’d have missed it— tilt, plummet
a straight line crashing into water a burst of wingbeats as
it bore itself back to air, nothing having
been caught. I was watching the osprey gliding along
flying smooth then piercing the water piercing
its own reflection wing-
beats thrashing air beads of water everywhere
nothing having been
caught I watched the osprey repeating over & over
its simple thought I like a nothingness
a scooped-out fruit—no—not like that, like
my eyes, ospreys
looking along the tree line tree after tree reflected
in the water which reflecting the sky appeared blue—& reflecting me too
was the osprey’s gliding & plummeting
which I began to think of
as a way of living—the falling & the coming up
empty—not so much the failure to catch as
the freedom to continue carrying forth
what can’t be abandoned
BELIEF SYSTEM
looking into the stream, I am the
stream. fawn with white spots I follow
the dwindling light as it disappears
behind a tree—when I arrive, there is only
me, tearing at the bloodied breast
of a robin. feels one way to discover,
or to be discovered, but to discover myself being
discovered, well…
I wrap my mouth
round the whipping grasses; I worship
what waves. when I pray beneath
the skylight between trees, I pray to the
scene. I can’t subtract myself from the sum
of what exists. two faces become
one as I abolish the distance between myself
& the pond; on the surface of things—
a hinge, swinging me toward
myself. a leaf
floats, red-veined, discarded. who will know me
without these clothes, this skin?
someone, wandering their own oblivion,
will hear my gasping suddenness & know
it to be holy. transformation. the trick of it.