Four Poems by Artemis Rose Archer

 

Sliver of Moon

Northern spirit, sliver of moon

Curiosity upon a trail of stepping stones, light years apart

Stillness within the traveller’s movement

Divine restlessness within her silent intention

Footsteps of shadow, alternating contact

Shades following the path of the high summer sun

Don’t stop for them, keep moving on

When turned away, they stride closer

They fall back again, never catching up

Mystery is a hawker 

Its turnings become petals of vivid colour,

before being pulled once again into black holes

Densely packed nothing, until something loosens once more

Whale tails begin to play violins and lunar children sail oceans in coracles of fortune

Grand orchestrations of hands and feet 

Limbs point and delight 

Diving deep, they write their names in luminescent shale

And offer themselves as a path through the water

 

 

Bumble

Today I walked with a bee

I walked slowly,

and to my left it flew

It hovered buoyantly and close to the earth

Its hum reverberating 

upon each kind of grass and 

insect below

Like a bumbling minute helicopter 

searching for speeding ants

In this quiet intensity, 

the air enveloped us in gorse, 

and in its coconut bliss we parted

 

 

Maple

From between my legs 

a maple tree winds upwards 

to the morning sky

Spreading like a wild fire 

Each leaf a fire in and of itself,

still burning fierce after a long night

Hot colours burn away the impressions 

of the gone

Leaving red shaking birdsong

Long whistles of sunlight 

blow through my bones 

and my body becomes a drum

A skin of stars 

stretched upon a frame

Every blade of grass is listening now

Each yields and holds the earth beat

Honouring blood and soil

 

 

Like a Songbird

Clarity in awe of zero

Breath told like a channel

Held, yielding tantric ecstasy 

Golden sun, rich with nothing

A concertina of stories collapses

The silence between each utterance 

now a wild creature 

Everything cackles

Possibility is frequency

Each murmur a freedom

Igniting the heart of a lioness 

Tender is her play

Delicate intent is like a songbird

Returning curious feathers and skin,

and dissolving silver hands 

Artemis Rose Archer is a singer-songwriter-guitarist and poet based in Liverpool.