Sylvia

~ SW Altair

She lay afloat, nakedly undulating
like a great maternal vessel.
Mother of the black corals.
A blinking eye, a quickening vein.
Hope was a mere pinnace to her greying ribcage.

She gathered death like she gathered water
around her wooden body.
Many have capsized this way.
Many who asked for roses got only thorns.
The leviathan approached her at midnight.

At dawn the light was soft like an unspoken wish.
Her hair grew heavy, her eyelids turned to a shade of blue
colder than the north star.
She opened her fists in the pummeled water.
Evergreen terrains stretched by her palms’ end.
Someone awaited her arrival.

The sea never ceased. With great power
it piled waves upon the hardened shores,
as heavy years piled upon the back of a defiant silhouette.
Forever bent but never broken, an ineffable wreckage.

From her sodden cartilages,
we collected things she once loved –
mushrooms and sows, skeletons and stones.
However ugly, however cold.
Our dearest smiling in her own shadow.

We buried everything in the moistened earth – those things,
melted lamps, fish bones, and the fat purple figs
fallen by her toes.
What was left from her pink knuckles and pretty smiles,
sewn together, became the map of a new voyage.

Then on a quiet night like this, her aroma suddenly came
from the norwegian sea, icy yet sweet like a comet.
It travelled through the branches of the moonlit laurels,
through the foliage of fond memories,
through the fingers of the solitary poetess,
through her burning artery, through her ardent hopes,
to the words as yet unborn
from her trembling lips.

In memory of Sylvia Plath

 

Originally published on October 8th, 2015 on my old blog. 

Published by SW Altair

8 thoughts on “Sylvia”

  1. This is beautiful. As I think you saw from my post, I live where Sylvia Plath spent some time and wrote much of ‘Ariel’, her last collection. I will be printing off your poem later so that I can appreciate it much more fully. I also thank you for helping me realise that WordPress tag words really help for other bloggers in WordPress to find shared interests. Please may I ask, did you actually search for ‘Sylvia Plath’ then my post came up? I would like to know more about how WordPress works. Or did WordPress just suggest to you to look at my blog???

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    1. How wonderful we were able to connect! I think we used the same tag “Sylvia Plath” and I was looking through other posts under this tag and came across your post.

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      1. Indeed, great to connect! Please could you clarify for me -sorry for being slow. Do you mean you just searched ‘Sylvia Plath’ in the WordPress Reader, or is there a seperate place you search in WP based on tagwords?

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  2. This was a wonderful poem. You create such vivid images…

    At dawn the light was soft like an unspoken wish. – I loved this line especially. You can almost imagine the light of dawn… the gentle movement of the sun. I can’t even describe how amazing this line was.

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    1. Thank you so much! You really made me pause to re-read these old poems that I am just reposting from my old blog. I wrote this poem two years ago. These lines feel so distant yet so familiar, as if they are a part of me that’s been forgotten. Thank you again for this lovely comment.

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