Autumn as a Portal
Anna Ruddock shares four poems full of arresting stillness and quietly shattering observations.
In these four poems, Anna explores (trying to resist) the commoditisation of rest. The resulting work is full of weighty moments, equally calm and fraught. The speakers reach outwards, upwards, and through water to seek an elsewhere “beyond the sky” where they are “learning to commune” with the body in nature.
Content warning: the fourth poem, ‘Lockdown Love Song’, makes brief references to COVID and sexual/physical assault.
Crests
All tether and weight I cannot lift
to sit to reach or
hold, can’t haul a c r o s s, can’t grip
a pen
but feel poem graze gullet, struggling
up – tiny diver
needing air. I transcribe without
movement: cursive
rope of waves backlit in dark.
Chalked crests
suspend wanting of salt above freezing
sand beneath
east coast flyway; knowing I love but
not seeing how
ceilings billow with light and with wing.
~~~
Autumn as a Portal
The reflection sank so deep that I began to wonder if the real world was actually that held beneath the skin of the river. That azure sky, those divining branches, that chalked cloud, honeyed November low sunlight, that occasional fine-lined plane. Viscous and still, could I step from the bank and enter not with human splash but soundless like an otter into element. Looking up to see my face in a different mirror, held by something choral.
Then I blinked, my vision briefly lifting, surfacing back into the reed-damp air that might be my most treasured thing, my deepest root. Vascular. I am of that lichen scent somehow. And then I saw the kingfisher. Unwavering neon arrow. Low to the water, yes; but above it, unmistakably.
~~~
Spring blooms beside the telly while I have Covid
Filament burning saffron
at the heart
of a six-petalled lemon
mint star.
Rhubarb and custard licked
up stems of
strangely yolk-blooded egg.
Gut-pinned in space I’m certain
if I peel
membrane from my eyes, form
will enter
and depose scrabbled words for
sufficiency -
this single every thing
wobbling.
~~~
Lockdown Love Song: Attempt Twenty-Four
You hauling me / into sky safety / crossing the bridge / graphs climbing redly / your smile dazed in the picture / my shield / fearful broccoli / police tape / no sitting / tears / on a curb / rainbow skirt / your face in a mask / still flinching my gut / buying us Magnums / room in pink sky / panorama / prison view / painted hearts / curling foetal / rooftop cacophony / muting corvid anxiety / disdain for post-viral / pulsing / in gaslight / sycamore sanctuary / and chips / and black coffee / sweet / like a grown-up / like you / gripping my wrists / when the bottom falls out / and I go with the herons / men without tops / slop drink on the High Street / others not breathing / screaming / steel ivy / contaging through Abbeville / you spinning their jasmine / teaching me ena to theka / forty / that blizzard / you / kicking the snowman / his dick out / his head off / at the candlelit bandstand / where they’re taking us raping us choking us burning us / mangling omicron / while I plane edges from gamma / so I can start saying love / then the moment
when birds turn
from feather-clad bones
into pulses of heat
that leave fear melted
in places, windows briefly
open to rivers and seas
that hold us and show purple
neon split fish in teal
water that I expect to edge
my tongue with mint but it buoys
with salt; those fish
untroubled by our shadow shapes
made calm by snorkelled breaths,
and all the while we were not
here, restrained from any place
beyond the sky,
learning to commune
in a realm neither water nor viscera
but punctured by heartbeats by
heartbeats by
heartbeats by
heartbeats by
heartbeats by
heart beats
nonetheless.
Anna Ruddock is curious about bodyminds. She is currently based in Cambridge, working independently as Equitable Health Futures. Anna was a founding member of Chronic Illness Inclusion and continues to collaborate on projects promoting health justice for people living with energy-limiting conditions (ELC). Her poetry has also appeared in Ink Sweat and Tears.
Contact: anna.ruddock[at]gmail.com
This post is part of the Substack series, ‘On Rest’. Each of the disabled and chronically ill creatives featured receives a remuneration of £50 (made possible by an Edge Fund grant).
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