Transformation

 

Not all the poetry in my new collection is about the sea and coast, some of it is about woods, moss, lichen, and .....   transformation.

This poem appeared on  my blog a few years ago when it was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Now, it's a key poem in my latest book, 'Before we Breathe'. I'm pleased at last to see a copy of the book resting on the moss in the place that inspired many of the poems that appear in it.

Skin

A tiny sip of lichen slips

through skin

and creeps slow towards her wrist.

 

Algae emerge

from the purlicue web,

epidermis writhes into green

  

between the index and the next finger.

Moss extends over the backs of her hands,

a soft velvet caress

 

across her desiccated skin.

Anchored by rhizoids

this slithering layer

 

seeps out through pores,

spreads like verdigris –

a tight-fitting glove.

 

Around hair roots

cerotodon begins, small and tight,

and soon she is crowned

 

with a mass of fire –

red and fertile in spots of light;

orange embers glow under the forest canopy.

 

Liverwort breeds in the fossae above her clavicle

and tracks towards marchantia in the jugular notch.

Below, cladonia sprout their tiny

 

umbrella organs across her cleavage.

Mood moss, wispy while dry

is verdant and lush when moist

 

between her legs.

                Spores spread.

She flourishes.

 

Her nails gleam

with gloss from the thorax of bluebottle.

Her black eyes

 

glisten, reflect the green sheen

of a magpie’s nape.

Wet leaves around her grow cold,

 

slick in the shade. An odour of rot

from rank weeds touches the ends

of her olfactory nerves.

 

Her mouth waters.

She ripens

out of the Earth

as something     else.

Something          vivid

 

*Copies of Before we Breathe are available direct from me. £8 plus postage. Email for order info: jackienews@hotmail.co.uk