Love in Four Elements
by Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer
Salamander Brandy ¹
I came in you a little red
at first confused
incendiary or an incendiary
you or I or us in glass
why not just a lizard’s leg
offering powerful trouble
from one to three
but autumn
your mother’s fruit now juice
has fathered sweat to broth
and puts all wondering to death-
agony to exhale through skin
to drown when breathing in
to taste myself to know myself
push
me
out
to let you in
– the tourist floats as light as bliss everything is beauty revelling bursting with
potential to be touched to be found crawling curved through orange thinning into
yellow almost white almost chaste to find then no shape no thing that can be
touched, curse, that can be fucked and oh, now this sense of coming back
to form
to a discriminate
longing for you
but winter
time and need swarm
to turn our juice to mead –
agony to breathe
to feel through pores –
a stranger looks at colour at light
and then to fall
back back
but oxygenated
at last as azure
¹Salamander brandy is believed to be a product of Slovenia which is made by placing a live salamander into fermenting fruit juice. This causes it to produce toxins that in turn create an aphrodisiac and hallucinogenic mixture.
Angler Fish with Esca ²
I dropped in you a little blue
fed moon now crescent
in a falling grimace
tongue-less
one word of flattery
from your sun
there was a time when the studio was rejected
when brush and breath were held for light strokes on the surface
when colour vowed never to blend or shade
only bind light in vibrant composition
but en plein air is foreign now
I have colour here enough
(though it may want for reds and yellows)
to draw form to you
there was a time when painting’s watery squint
could make braille of mirror’s image
but I have looking-glasses here enough
(hanging over peering down)
to keep you green in me
but what aggressive mimicry is this that lures
luminescence from heat and never quite absorbs
I could live like that
you drop a stone far above
what of it here below
I can adapt to that
but if another
then another
yet another
organs fuse together
where are those colours now to flare in my defence
to keep me from this parasite
this paling green to grey
²The angler fish can be found at the very bottom of the ocean where females attract prey to themselves in the darkness with their esca (luminous flesh protruding above their mouths like fishing rods). Males are far smaller and have evolved to fuse physically with the female and remain with her and any other attached males until she dies.
Bird (unidentified) and Eggs
I cracked in you a little grey
(perhaps silvering at some later stage);
rock has fused, but there breathes a ridge,
a tentative tone of pink.
What of brandy, water:
did I not drink enough
for a clear reflection?
You gave me an answer
in the shaking loose of feathers;
with every one I fashioned a nest.
You gave me an answer
in the breaking of a diamond
into eight equal parts,
with every piece a concave glass.
Why not a pair of wings
or a set of rings?
A little sting
at first
as flesh gives way
to feather,
a little blush
at last
as skin gets bound
by history.
History,
in one fell swoop?
So I take an egg
from my pocket
and gently drop it,
(smash, crack, ooze)
then another,
yet another,
my gills gape and flutter,
like fabric stitched for holding hope –
but agony is to bare.
These two wounds
are offering up a beak,
breaking through skin
at first,
then water,
reaching air
at last.
From here, now
looking down, I see
mosaics forming from our shells,
a stippling of shade and light,
fixing us to the ground,
for this moment at least.
There is perhaps some comfort then
in history
(I’ve heard it said
mosaics patterned temples in Ubaid).
Now I float here,
half in, half upon
fluorite’s frozen movement,
and its ambiguity of colour,
with the taxonomic question,
swan or crow or something else?
But rosemary is drying,
it brings me to the present.
That grey,
(smelt only for remembrance)
may yet be violet again;
it may glow,
(perhaps with a new light)
for nothing catches fire
like feeling dried by thought –
how can this become pure?
Not chaste
(for that is a smudging of us all)
but formless,
wild.
Roe Deer in the Wood
I break from you a flaring red,
your white heart darting through
the summer wood,
to darkness,
thickness,
quiet.
See our rings, these figure eights,
infinity round tree trunks
and broken stumps;
how necessary,
yet fruitless
are all attempts
at permanence.
I come here every day,
through the deepening of our hides
to smoky quartz, obsidian.
In these twilight months of black bile
I never humour thought too long;
you see to that;
I hear a tender step,
your hoof upon a hazel wand
and turn –
in nature there’s no blemish but the mind.
I vow to follow Plato
only through the words of Francis;
purity seems so cold and dry
when love is digging under ice
for earth’s dark root
and, clasping it between my teeth,
I taste old phlegm and blood.
Your eyes are acorns,
your ears young leaves,
but your edges and colours
are melting into myth and paint,
where Geneviève of Brabant
once sealed the pleasure
for six long years until her lover
chased you to the cave
and returned her to a former honour.
But you are as active here
in shade and dapple
as in enlightenment.
With your neck arched
you pull up fiery buttercups
and beech shoots,
your nose wet with dew,
but your eyes dry and watchful.
Now you are going,
the ground snaps a little green
with your farewell.
I will not follow
but you may come again,
golden red and spotted white,
alert to love’s attention.