Hilaire Wood

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 flakes of snow.

Long before death, parts of my body

have become dust,
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,

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

that time itself seems frozen.

As gently and silently as drifting snow,

I move out of my old skin,
discard the past,

let it hover, then disperse,

lightly dusting the future.     
                          

By the Pool at Gelli Fach

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

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.

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