Patricia Prime: HOLDING THE SKY

............ sad the haze in the meadow
.............. where I pick young herbs
........................ when I think

.................... how it shrouds me

...................... Saigyo


this spring
this morning
with
the moon fading
the sun up

I see
at the field’s edge
lying in a furrow
a tiny shoe
once white

it shifts beneath
my touch
like a bulb
dug up
too early

& when
I kneel & pull
it emerges
stiff & cold
as bone


the shade of you fits both sky and earth fades out in the chilly margins the day you lose your shoe faraway time when the cow pasture was rugged bush a path down to the river you and your family gone to swim so much comes down to water in the end brush laden with water with words the topography a repository of living in sepia film the lost shoe a child’s hand the almost lost folds of tissue thin skin

by Patricia Prime

Auckland, New Zealand