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    The Visitations
    The Visitations
    The Visitations
    Ebook69 pages26 minutes

    The Visitations

    By Kathryn Simmonds

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The physical and the metaphysical meet, and questions of new motherhood are set against those of faith and the larger conundrum of how to live in this newest collection of poetry from Kathryn Simmonds. As in her debut collection, an appealing, deceptively simplistic voice prevails in these verses, though subtle shifts of language and perspective imply darker themes and worlds unseen. The tone is often simultaneously satirical and elegiac and the volume abounds with sudden moments of strange illumination: a lime tree strikes up a conversation; a life coach finds an old passport; an infant teeters on the brink of speech.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeren
    Release dateOct 1, 2013
    ISBN9781781721490
    The Visitations

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      Book preview

      The Visitations - Kathryn Simmonds

      Feinstein

      I

      Sunday Morning

      Since I’ve stopped praying

      I’ve got so much more done:

      the fridge is cleaner, I read more fiction,

      the telephone is less often off the hook.

      Since I’ve done away with God

      I’ve done the bathroom up

      and tried a dozen different recipes.

      Since I’ve stopped considering the nature

      of the soul, the infinite, all that,

      I’ve found the joy of gardening;

      I garden without concern

      for the intricate glory of the Hollyhock.

      The news is always on, the multitudes

      keep dying, and what’s one less prayer

      circling the stratosphere?

      He’ll find me, if he chooses,

      he’ll lift me like a woolly two-year-old,

      secure me to the fold. Meanwhile

      I’m eating chocolates in bed,

      the words of the psalms dissolving like an old dream,

      I’m right here with a magazine,

      – Shock New Pictures, All Your TV Favourites –

      the church bells making a distant din,

      the duvet warm and comforting,

      the tumble dryer just spinning, and spinning.

      Oversleeping

      And there are the clothes you dropped, the arms of a green shirt

      raised in surrender, the slough of nylon

      and a dress of apricot wool.

      Sit up and see the sheets fine-wired with pubic hair and eyelashes,

      skin cells scattered like flakes of prehistory.

      Your clothes have been going out of fashion,

      quickly like the turning of a pear, slowly like a bone bleaching.

      No matter,

      reclaim the leather boots you loved so much,

      zip them right up to the knee and walk;

      you are Jairus’ daughter, passing through

      the convalescent house, its shelves of misremembered books,

      its shivers of dust.

      What else is there to do but open windows, let the outside tumble in

      like washing from a glorious machine?

      The day is half over, but still blue. Step out and balance

      on the ledge. Below a brown bird darts

      over the garages

      and is gone,

      another yanks a worm from its clay bed and flies with it –

      fly worm, fly!

      The pillow-creases in your cheek smooth to make you young again.

      Your leg hair stands to gold attention. Courage now, step out,

      feel the plummet, then the catch and you’re up,

      swimming in

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