Poetry: Pond Trilogy

Pond Trilogy
By Kat Hargreaves

I.

Hush, moon. A papercut moon,

dead as a hangnail—or a door-knocker

against which I throw my bones. You say

No shadow when everything in shadow then leave me

for days. Last winter: the wolves’ teeth

for jewels. Something to bury, this—silent,

sewn soft with limbs. And the ash

fizz in the dark. Home

and then no home.  

II.

Everything, and the violence—lake here

was in the distance—before—becomes the fracture—

becomes now cold bodies

hitting tarpaulin,  

slap against  

lake sheen, the tobacco forgotten—

burning wetly, the tart flame somehow— 

the slack clasp of the garment

wettened—thicker skin— 

a looser seal against this  

pond somehow sucks the ash under—

barely remembering to be lipped

by the fish. A looser mouth  

might have saved me. That  

is why I don’t walk deeper:

   finding 

   I’ve followed you

   into me.  

III.   

Can you find me here. Find me inside you, smell of your damp hair, one foot wet from a laughing mouth. Press and I am. Press me for I would tell you what, but the dawn hunts the moon without end, and darling, you have work in the morning. Wake to make eggs anyway, the quilt still warm, the animals in the window basins; outside, the din becomes a wood room full of bees. There is never enough coffee. The papers in the box sit unread. Towards noon, when the keys left next to the pillow, I will feed your mewling cat and name all our children. Their noses surely the dullest knife against my memory’s throat. But my throat must be thicker than the moon’s eggs lost restlessly in the field; deeper than the moon’s heart (for even a dart in jest will graze bone) when the morning gets caught in its veiny throat. Nothing so easily plucked as a stem seeps bitter juice, but the box is the size of the room. I cup every inch of you slowly, so you remember my name. Every day another skin and they fill the chambers of my heart’s rooms, a further tissue to thicken the fat against winter but this time, watch me enter it wisely. How could it not be easy, after the hurt so big I smelt the meat gone bad in the wind; the night the dogs beat a circle frantic round the yard. Your heart’s tears become my skin and the skins on the eggs grow thicker with cold; hang in my belly as I wait by the pond. Mine, I will meet you where I left her, where the box I’ve built catches, smolders thickly into the surrounding grass. Where the body in the earth, and the earth holds still the pond, and the ash becoming

                                                                  into

                                                                        you.

All Rights Reserved to Kat Hargreaves