‘Forging’ appears in the COZE magazine in association with Curtin University and the Curtin Writer’s Club, 2018.
Forging
My heart, my precocious desire
has been carefully set with flyaway twigs.
Now a spark lands, not for love,
but a wish to do the world some good
my well-intentioned idealism
blows gently on the stuttering sparks
sputter, gasp and twinkle I feed these
little fluttering stars with my breath
and cup my hands around
this growing instinct to protect.
Now a glow, a bright, bright burn
to shade out sorrow, flakes fly
up into the sky and they are a wish
forged in a steel-mind.
An impenetrable wall of self-betterment,
it will protect all.
Maths, physics, politics, literature
gradually grow out from the dark.
They will be our beacons. Burn,
become an iron heart: meet hammer,
and do not fear the fire.
All-encompassing,
bright embers bring out your bright hue.
Be unafraid; I have no doubt that
if it had to, it would burn itself out
but this forging is never finished.
It will always
light our land, our sight,
a universal collection,
protection. An unbreakable,
refining, perfectionist piece
getting brighter
with every flyaway twig.
Working with an editor was a fascinating experience for me. My editor really helped strengthen this poem. For example, I struggled with the structure, and it was only after she encouraged me to change it that I decided to make each verse have one more line than the previous – each a tiny bit bigger than the last, it reflects the poem itself, getting bigger with each line; ‘with every flyaway twig’. Now, that’s one of my favourite things about it.
‘Tuesday Mornings’ won the youth category of the Peter Cowan’s Patron’s Prize for Poets 2016.
Tuesday Mornings
His house has been torn down twice
and rebuilt brick by brick.
And though people don’t really talk,
they say he’s ‘not well’ or ‘ill’ or ‘sick’.
And they just won’t say where he goes
every Tuesday morning at six.
Sort of like a hole in time,
like Tuesday mornings don’t exist.
People say that she is strange
she wears clothes so many times sold.
She sees the world through a telescope,
and though she is young, she seems old.
Her clothes are faded and full of holes,
she swings her feet, sits on the bridge,
the water: she doesn’t feel the cold
up away on the ghostly ridge.
“You don’t do as we say
You don’t do as we do
There must be something
Wrong with you.”
He sat in a tree.
He said, “Go, just go.”
She said, “Why?”
He said, “I don’t know.”
I’m also a big believer in children’s poetry! ‘The Library of Life’ was published in the Read, Write, Repeat anthology by Write4Fun in 2015.
The Library of Life
My heart is a book, left on the shelf,
where people peruse through my sense of self.
All the pages, they softly flutter,
under the gazes of people who mutter.
In the dim of a candle, late at night,
words leak on the pages, under the light.
The readers have books, souls of their own,
that others read when the library they roam.
Drafted by empathy, written by love,
the words don’t react to the eyes above.
So, my friends, do not grieve –
those who say I wear my heart on my sleeve.
Emily-Oscar Siggs - Writer, Editor 