Extract from Astonished by Light

Estelle Banks

Harvest moon

The autumn evening – sultry and red 

settles on us like a song,

Beijing and the noise 

of the filling night market - there beside the window,

in the hotel room we drink up every spirit – 

bed sheets ruched in the ruddy, slow

movement of her

now over me – pressing like the tongue of a bell.

Time like water seems 

to take the path of least resistance, 

I think to go find where everything 

has poured itself away, tonight, people out there who celebrate 

under the now-risen gold  coin of the moon, her hands 

over my breasts and the changed 

light of the room – I could love her forever. 

Our last night in a city I have only ever half known,

everything turning to memory, 

a sphere as a shadow and nothing to show 

for us, save the moment where sound becomes song 

and a room torn to a present of sweat and effort

the boundary burst to the blind, star-white night – 

resounding, we were here.

Diagram

Waiting –

nothing now in the room beside

the dark I trace

sleet still falling

and there below

that moonless Danube takes through the city – holds ever more

to the lip of all-splitting,

and I could make out the shape of everything,

lines and hollow beds

take the message from my still dark of

the very end of bodies –

but there are people waking now –

running starblind to the flood

in the blur of blue gold – drinking up.

When she arrives – she is

full skin and ever new in the snowlight

beautiful,

her red mouth full,

here too is the river.

Floridian resurrection 

we’re in separate beds again in the motel room,

just what ‘real people’ do – 

I suppose these days I am anything but, 

just an overgrown haze in the shape of yes, 

frustrations manifold and quake

through the stifling dusk – 

and I think to go now, 

down to the bayou by the highway

that thrums dark with after-storm,

to find those drab fronds 

that unfurl themselves

dripping 

thunder light, 

these are the rains that disinter,

make real and anew, could 

make me anything but this – 

and by the window, she laughs at my hair 

that stands on end – pulled at 

by the rumbling storm and stars 

to the highway – to go,  

to run –

To you (10,000 lightyears from here)

A new moon in the great plains, 

no one in the house, New Mexico, 

just the night, insistent upon the panes.  I’m lonely here 

and watch the clock’s arm  spin 

undisturbed,

just the house  and the ticking  earth below horizoning – 

when I open the backdoor 

I see the sky now frenzied with cataract suns  and 

I am astonished 

by light, waiting in the doorway

to greet anything. 

They’re crazed in Roswell 

talks of spirals and signs of life and who am I to deny you then

the room becomes an open door 

and I suppose myself

up there,  hurtling full pelt 

between  far  constellations, wait.

For you, whenever, 

would I be  as a wild bird 

flung into the stillness of a room, jutting like a lumpish star 

alive –  is it strange – alive – 

tonight in love

and here I am

earnest as still water 

the sky there above

domain of things yet 

to understand – the slow-moving 

Mars and Jupiter stare naked out 

like blank faces

ready to jump at us in the dark.

If I could 

I would take it all away,

devein that milky-way thread and leave us

to the mountains ultraviolet and taste of wine and touch 

a willow somewhere swaying 

shaken off its stars, 

and the bodies –  

no talk of all we might miss

just this, between us, 

constellate –