A Weaving: Three Poems about Elizabeth Smart
by Veronica Gaylie

I. First

A moss Venus
stands by the fountain
in marbled disbelief.

You drowse through
on heavy lids, past
willow, plum and pear,
trying to remember how
those old roses without
names climbed over
the garden gate to the forest
and became rumours.

Move away from this carefully.

II. Platform

Don't look at these words.
They rattle between us
and then you look up
and see through me,
the way a body fills
with silence, eyes first.
I know, you fell
from sleep and now
you wander too close
to things. Keep talking.
Tongues remember
everything, mouths will
open and taste rain.
So let's begin
now. There.

Don't look at these words.

III. Leaving

Summer nights
below pine trees
we draw our bodies
round the earth,
up to our waist

in rivers lit by
candle dreams;
every thought becomes
an invisible friend.

Still, I let it.
In these green times
you walk through me.