Storyteller Talking at the End of Her Days

So what is paradise, since we yearn
for it so unevenly and think we touch
it but so fleetingly it is brief as the touch
of the dream's finger to our lips as we sleep
When you read my words to me they escape me.

Paradise seems like hell to me, all that lying
in the sun and sweating lazy sex.
I like mine in a colder climate where
the only warmth is what we ourselves
can generate between us and call passion: the heat
of our bodies coming alive between us.
I know I wander somewhat when I speak; it's because
my mind entertains so many guests—each thought
reminds me of another and they all crowd
in at once too quickly to separate so I embrace
them all. Sure I've travelled had lovers
married had a child and dreams
wrote some of them down. Sometimes I got lost
in the tangle, locked to a place a time
and wrote it down, broke away to follow
another thread. A myriad of voices
woven with my own, singing a madrigal
of light, each note a point in the woven sky.
My favourite memories are the most simple—
sitting at night on the chesterfield, the rest
of the house asleep, the cat beside me. I
touched her face as though it were mine.
There isn't much I would do again
if I could. I haven't yet let go
of it all in my mind. I can unlock it at will
but it all floods in, more than I can control.
I always used to like the feeling of having
more in my hands than I could control.
I used to like dangerous men but the ordinary
was the best, when the spark of feeling
between us wasn't just pride,
and we weren't afraid to let
ourselves be taken... enough of the flesh
for now it holds me.
I feel I haven't lived enough have lived
too much have lived on fire trying to dance
so fast the flames would not burn. And now
I'm lying in a snow field flush with the
earth; it's cold but I can see the tangle
of stars in the sky and a few are falling.
Yes it's true, each one is a small ball
of fire like the sun but a few are falling.

 

© Neile Graham

Previously published in the anthology More Garden Varieties II and the chapbook Sheela-na-Gig.
First published in The Windsor Review