Hilaire's poetry has appeared in a number of anthologies and she has published a first collection, The Sea Road. Her poems move around the theme of the individual's journey, treading a path between vision and acceptance, and often draw upon nature, archetype and myth for their imagery. Sometimes dark and disturbing, sometimes joyful and sublime, they reflect the way we are bonded to the natural world and responsive to its underlying rhythms and manifestations.
POEMS
If I Were A Snake
If I were a snake I could shed my skin
easily,
no, not easily
perhaps, but quickly,
it would be
like taking off a tight coat
in a small
space
and being
revealed in my smartest clothes,
freshly-purchased,
cool and colourful,
ready to
introduce myself again,
a re-invention.
If I were a
snake, I’d think little of it,
I’d have been
born with an instinct for change,
a talent for
it, I’d have moved swiftly
through all
manner of deaths and entrances.
But being human
my skin sheds differently;
it scales,
exfoliates,
delicately, in
its own time,
as soft and silent in its falling
as soft and silent in its falling
as flakes of
snow.
Long before
death, parts of my body
have become
dust,
hovering and settling around me,
hovering and settling around me,
particles of
the past.
Being human,
shedding my whole skin
would be
violent - unviable.
Imagine uncovering the dark and secret
throbbing of the heart,
Imagine uncovering the dark and secret
throbbing of the heart,
the lungs’
bloody, tidal rhythm.
How could I
survive without a barrier of skin,
of soft and
subtle hide?
I choose then
the human way,
to move towards
this new beginning,
with gossamer
steps,
an unfurling so gradual
an unfurling so gradual
that time
itself seems frozen.
As gently and
silently as drifting snow,
I move out of
my old skin,
discard the past,
discard the past,
let it hover,
then disperse,
lightly dusting
the future.
Something is
happening
and slowly the water-lily bud
rises to the
surface - born of water,
how brave its
journey into air.
At a pace too
slow for the eye to grasp
it begins to swell, slender streaks of white
it begins to swell, slender streaks of white
shine through
the restraining sepals
like a bosom
escaping a bodice
and as time
flows silently on
a citadel of
petals circles the centre
which slowly
unfurls revealing a brightness,
yellow fringed
with saffron -
a chalice, a crown.
a chalice, a crown.
Too soon the
flower will fold its golden beauty
back to bud and
slip beneath the waters
to lie like a
tattered ghost -
but for this short time, in raw perfection,
the water-lily
reflects the grail.
See also: Honno Poem of the Month
storingmagic.blogspot.com
musingsfromgellifach.blogspot.com
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