St. Ives
Kirsten McAteer (New York University, USA)
The sculptor said, “There is health & purity in form,”
a hole, that first pierced shape, a miracle
something to be seen through, something to escape.
Her studio garden is hidden from the town,
the walls high but sea still visible. On days like these the late
October light wanders along rocks & coastal crag
where land crumbles west to be smacked by the Atlantic,
where the town huddles in stone & narrow streets
fishermen’s cottages now holiday lets, their graves
facing west like hundreds of gray shingles raised
by a storm. Untethered, slipped out of my mooring,
I envy the sculptor & her garden, wild with intent
where holes might be painted, or strung with wire
where large round forms of stone and metal,
resonant and runic in verdigris rime, are strewn
among unruly plants and paths that curve in crushed gravel.
A place for cats to lurk. A place, walled off yet open, to make.
Through one hole I spy a hawk moth,
its proboscis unfurled in a flower,
shimmering and dusted,
the size of a baby’s fist,
caught in an instant then flitting away.
Floating in the last October light.
Kirsten McAteer is a poet and psychotherapist in Portland, Oregon who is very attuned to and inspired by the natural world around her. She is currently pursuing a MFA in poetry through New York University.
