Forest inquires:

How do you decide, choose your design, find its guise,
give it a face, surrender to the poem's own
vanity,
        and choose the poem's alignment?


                                                  an­ answer forms:

this alignment idea,
you think it simple,
everybody understands
what your inquiry means

alignment -  the appropriate relative position

we live in relative position to each other, our poems too, for they are but written synapses of our close captioned interactions, seemingly random, but assuredly not, as we invest in ourselves, seeking the mysterious appropriate answer
                                                                ­                        from the Theory of Poetic Relativity

                                                   ­             i love your question;                              hold it to my nostrils,          
                                             ­             smell the coffee aroma wake up blast inherent;
                                                                ­      
 kiss its robust childlike cheeks for the simple   soulfulness essential arousal;
for you see sir you have found
the appropriate position that relates us, our mindful words;

                                 answer no good, wholly insufficient?
                                        perfect.
                          as i close this quick cooked to perfection laboratory solution, take note

                              
                            ­                        the earth has moved
                                our hearts have beaten a measly thousand times
                                    time and space have appropriated our prior
                                          
relativity

when you return years hence this poem's shape will perforce have moved. for words are weathered flux constant and yet inherently unchanged except for the part of us that changes with every re-reading  

and what was


**right before has left and the center has moved again

Muse hasn’t left my bedside for days:
         she races around
         the garden when I sleep:
                            it’s the only time she leaves,
                            she’s so loyal.
A few days ago, I heard Muse barking
         in the garden;
         I knew she’d seen the woodpecker again.
                       I’ve learnt the differences in her voice:
this is what comes of weeks bedbound.
But when the sedatives wear off
         I can do more than lie there:
                       I can feel the touch from my grandma,
                       I can smell last night’s family supper,
                                    I’m lucid.
Yesterday, the electroconvulsive therapy shocked my brain
                       today, my muscles feel as knotted
                                    as my oesophagus.
I’m on my back now; my only company
         is the ceiling; not even
                        the canopy of stars I once gazed at with joy.
                                      
© Sia Jane

My daughter says
every tree has a soul.
Some are good, some are bad.
But always, a soul.
My daughter is young enough
to know these things.

My daughter says also
some trees have a spirit.
(But only the good trees.)
People, too.
She is old enough
to say these things.

Guided by spirit, we can grow
from the crack in a boulder.
We can lift sidewalks.
We bend and yet are strong.
We flower, we bear fruit, we give seed.
We are where the raccoon sleeps,
the hawk nests, the monkeys play.

Without the spirit we twist,
we wither, we break.
With the spirit our roots take hold.
My daughter knows. So young, so old.

I am thinking of the dead
who are still with us
on their way in the rain
to meet lovers or brothers
and my sadness waves back
like grain in the fields
of lost summers and summers
before that, fireflies in the dark
still young and beautiful
like starry nights, but for them
there is no moon, and for us
the same news we do not receive.

She was told from
an age so young
that she indeed possessed all
the magic she needed
within herself
to set
the world
to right.

She placed daisies in
her long black hair
and skipped to the beat of
the songs her mother
had sung to her
before she left
escaping
her father.

She was often alone
rarely with friends as
she found comfort in the faeries
she spoke and sang to while
the wind
gently blew
hair in
her face.

She giggled when with
her only little sister
the best part of her world
to whom she adored more than
the breaths
she took
each and
every day.


She stood firm at home
never allowing
her father’s drunken words
to penetrate her self made wall
of anger and despair
because inside
her mind
there
were angels.

She closed her eyes at night
wishing the demons
to disperse into the heavy winds
that howled through the rafters
reminding her
she was
in fact
alive.

© Sia Jane

Barefoot standing backwards on
            the doctor’s scales; the weighing games begin.
I can’t make sense of how or why
            I’m here; dragged from my mother’s car,
when only earlier I was dancing
            at my ballet class; I slipped and fell
on the cold dance floor, and now
            I’m under hospital arrest. All I want
is to escape; because I truly thought
            this was all in my past.
But the Devil and God are raging inside me
            all the time.
It began with only one pound lost;
            a controlled experiment, one I thought
I could win. And now,
            I’m barefoot standing backwards
on the doctor’s scales –
            There’s only one way; Up!
                No spiral down.
I’ve found my way back here, somehow,
                    and I’ll find my way out of here, somehow.

© Sia Jane