Heloise at the Oratory
For M
i. Matins
I have been a long time here,
my love, hands thin
on the dry scrape of winter,
still in its habit
of pinning the hours
in a trace of ice as blue-lipped
and weary as bird bones.
Do you remember? The spill
of morning along our thighs,
those blackening curves
soft as water against the slick
darkness of you – turning lover’s
wrists towards the sky,
her colours ash, lime, sharp
with the pull of days
falling to a close? We were like
sea-gods roaming the deep
haul and cast, its call
on our mouths as urgent
as the dulled briny hum
of the drowned where night
heaved us in her swell,
bruised our eyes, lips, moored
our hands as if we had years,
and the nesting spine-tails surfaced
the cold stilling the last of the wintering
dark in their closed wings.
(published in The Lampeter Review, Issue 7)
Davina Allison’s work has recently appeared in Eureka Street, Poetry Scotland, Eremos, Dappled Things, The Australian Poetry Journal and The Lampeter Review.
She has a degree in Classics and a Masters in Applied Linguistics with Honours.
She tweets at @DavinaAllison
andotherpoems.com 