2 poems

by Sarah Wallis

The Grief Stone 

There’s no reflection in the cool, blue stone, handed 

over, funeral by funeral, just so much seasick motion 

to set sway above each gravity centre. If we could 

only see to tell the story but we polish our faces until 

bee-stung and the salt rendered mirrors are moony 

with dreaming. So like our grandmothers’ fierce pride 

in their steps, scrubbed until gleaming, as they set out 

in grim to shine stone, blue pendant swinging. The gem

knows now, as we do, all the men of our family 

are dead, and there will be no more. Barren fields start 

decay early and there’s no reflected light at all, 

dull little pool of stopped animation, nothing rife, 

no movement, no teeming water, no lilt alike the constant 

ocean, our line is ending, and I am the last to wear lapis 

lazuli, the blue hanging heart on the komboloi beads.

Towards the Drowned World

We confront the outsize ocean, 

she who has never been other than herself.

We say it is like this – 

a blue chandelier of leaping dolphins, 

the waterfall of crystals shivering in delight. 

Or we say it is like that – 

one green day, in the hay meadow, bumbles tumbling, 

seedheads, poppies flying; we sneezed and sneezed. 

But then she is herself again, at one with all 

her many saltmoods, in blue and green and grey, 

in topaz, azure and in turquoise turtle bays.

A storm moves in, and she is a wild sapphire 

unleashing her ire on the dark, moon 

dipped horizon and we flee our confrontation, 

we say, the ocean, 

sometimes she is like this, and then, then she is like that.

Sarah Wallis is a poet and playwright based in Scotland, since moving from Yorkshire two years ago, where she was involved with Leeds Fringe & Pub Theatre. A National tour (UK) of her play Laridae was cancelled due to Covid but the team hope to return to production soon. She has two chapbooks out in the world at the moment, Medusa Retold, from @fly_press and Quietus Makes an Eerie from Dancing Girl Press, with How to Love the Hat Thrower due May 2022 from @SelcouthStation. She tweets @wordweave and you can find out more at sarahwallis.net