Steve Xerri : former teacher, musician & designer now engaged in poetry & pottery. Was Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year 2017. Published in Acumen, Amaryllis, Brittle Star, Clear Poetry, Envoi, Ink Sweat and Tears, The Interpreter’s House, The Poetry Shed, Poetry Society Newsletter (Members’ Poems), Proletarian Poetry and Stride Magazine.
Feather and Shell
I
The same rind of early moon
hangs over the blackbird
and me, he pecking
under the lantern bush
and I heading for home : I see
the startled stop, the stiffening
of wing and tail. Between us we
hold a brief bright nothing, each
quite still, my gaze confronting
the gold-ringed pip of his eye,
obsidian mirror deep enough
to swallow the world entire.
II
Later, on the brink
of sleep, my thought
dives deep to the sunless
home of the nautilus,
of glassy things that move
like stars alive with hunger,
delicate as filigree
in the crush of unlit seas.
They squiggle in silence
away from my light,
signs leaving a page
to blankness, entering
their lives’ long night,
where the fading mind
yoked to this flesh
can only dream
of following.
Steve Xerri
