#justwolf

Trzeba teraz w snieg uwierzyc? -Boleslaw Lesmian We wake, and pull the curtains back. Once more the world is black-and-white (or white-and-black). "How can all change overnight?" (you ask me) "How?" I answer (and I fear I'm right): "It's snow we must belive in now." A father and his son, we walk. You take my hand, warm in a glove. Our footsteps creak. How can they, on such soft stuff? (you wonder) How? I wonder too and if, my love, it's snow we must believe in now? Travelling at the speed of light, we make our way through galaxies; to left and right: stars a child could almost seize! Amazing how we navigate these cosmic seas (this snow we must believe in now)! Our skylight frames a silent film, an animated whirling show: white flecks of foam that fall and rise (now fast, now slow). Just look at how they change their minds - and how they glow! It's snow we must believe in now. So wake, and pull the curtains back to find a world that's black-and-white (or white-and-black). "How can all change overnight?" (you'll ask then) "How?" Then answer (and your answer's right): "It's snow we must believe in now." Cathal McCabe

Don't be afraid. Step over the edge. You'll fall; don't try to fly. Arrow yourself like a pelican; think fish. Sight yourself beneath the surface; know that your first gulp of sea will swallow you whole. Feel your skin silver as you splash headfirst into your element. Dive. Leave the shallow reach of the air where it left you, and the sky you no longer need to fill the hollow bones of gulls. Now remember. Let the lost gills behind your ears breathe again, your flesh fill with water. The sinking light will expand your eyes, inflate them to a gape for the sun. Slip out of your hands and feet and swim. Smooth your shoulders, merge your legs. Your spine will thread to the current. Think squid. Go deeper. Descale yourself as you cool into the dark. Mould yourself to the tide, reabsorb your architecture. Pale as you grow monstrous, a creature to tangle sperm whales in the drowning tentacles that leap from your head. Taste the oceans at their tips. Trust your seeing tongues as your eyes widen into blindness. Distil the ink of your blood. Listen for the lowered waves, tectonic cracks traveling through sunken storms, the filaments of voice resounding depth on depth. Slow now to the rhythms of sleep. Shrink into the dust of life that resists the flattening miles above. Think polyp. Your eyes will close into the pulp of senses. Drag the sea-bed to the caustic plume of a volcanic vent, spewing grains of the molten source, the liquor of mountains. Anchor at the mouth of its boiling pore and spread your fronds. Be still. Begin to feed from your beginning.

Gregory Leadbetter

The winter flowering whose name I keep forgetting and that I might have trimmed too often because I loved the fiery blossom died - one branch at a time. I lopped each off with a neighbour's pruning hook but left the naked stump for years I dreamed of green swelling and unfurling. I watched and saw that there was nothing. At last a friend came round and dug it out. I was amazed by the stone weight and how he wrestled with the roots and how long it went on smouldering.

Joan Michelson