How the World
by and published in Edition Five of Pomegranate
Creation, after a time slumming with progress,
reapplied itself on a hillside where my feet
were lizards flirting with the patio heat.
The second day brought a valley of sundried cloth,
towels fluttering a scent of shrubs and myrtle
and afternoon laid out like a bronze turtle.
Rain ran its fingertips around the basin’s rim,
ushering in scowling clouds from the mountain ridge,
the smell of cheese cured for three days in a ditch.
Flying ants didn’t manage to survive the night
and lay crusting on a half-diamond marble tile;
all the while life was waiting for them to spoil.
The thought of this valley glowing under winter,
with a drift of snow slumbering across the hill,
is how the world was reordered in a lull.
Scorpions came on the penultimate evening
in a muggy funk caused by the summer downpour,
twisting grass and scuttling like death on their claws.
At twenty-five to four light pushed out the old sky
and coaxed apart the house’s stubborn, resting doors
to the basking birds and cicadas’ applause.
Dai George
Dai George splits his time between Cardiff and New York. When in New York, he tries to convince himself that poetry is a serious academic discipline by studying for an MFA at Columbia University.