The Crescent Moon Spring of Dunhuang

You said you would soon go
                                                to another world.
 
I had not expected this…
 
a desert curved
                                to the small of your back,
flesh-coloured sand
                                against the black-hole mountain side.
 
But this is definitely your eye,
that brilliant faded-denim blue,
half open in the sun.
 
Of course your parts
                have come apart,
                                                   dispersed
so this bright eye is in the hollow
just above your buttocks.
 
A monastery
                   or luxury hotel
(and either one would seem appropriate)
sits like a bushy eyebrow
above the lid.
 
Your skin has wrinkled,
coarsened with the change,
but soaks up sun
                 intently,
as it always did.
 
Fifteen eager camels
following their weary masters
                                trace a soft path
round your eyelashes.
 

Lyn Moir

published in Agenda, 2008

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The Green Infanta

I have become
a green cheese moon,
my Janus face
is one half ice
and half deep sea.
I’ve turned into
a royal dwarf –
can this be me?
 
My hair from gold
to silver’s changed,
my cheeks rotund,
my profiles strange.
One eye silver,
one eye brass,
stare each other
in the face.
 
I stand in this
once courtly scene,
a stumpy, ugly
future queen.
Picasso made me
thus, obscene
intoning ‘green,
I love you green’.
 

Lyn Moir

in collection Velásquez’s Riddle, 2011, Calder Wood Press,
ISBN 978-1-9026293-8-4;
first published in The Interpreter’s House, 2007

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Ice Dream

You put a crystal rhomboid in my hand
so that we were inside it, trapped between
the ice-cliffs. It became imperative
to reach the upper level.
 
Suspended from the ceiling, I looked round,
found you inspecting fissures
in the third conchoidal fracture. I knew you
could calibrate the exact unmeasured distance
I required to reach a foothold.
 
Waltzing on the inside of the accidental iceberg
we reached the ground together.
 
It was cold.
 

Lyn Moir

published in ARTEMISpoetry, 2009

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Heron on the Pier

Four times you came, four mornings,
blade-beaked grey dawn sentinel,
spindle-legged on mediaeval
stones. Four times you turned your back
on me, the academic gown
of feathers ruffled at your neck.
Stiff and unbending, you stared
balefully towards the sea,
hunch-backed, an old man grumping
at his incapacities.
 
I was surprised to see you
as a bird, so like yourself
I had no hesitation
in identifying you,
though I had hoped for closer
manifestations. The last
time you appeared, you swivelled
awkwardly, stared, nodded, dipped
your beak, saluting briefly
before taking to the air.
 

Lyn Moir

in collection Breaker’s Yard, 2003, Arrowhead Press,
ISBN 978-0-9540913-9-2;
first published in Equinox, 2002

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