Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Tuesday Poem: Love Poem for Mark by Airini Beautrais

Mark follow your heart.
Over seas to the girl
who hung all your doors.
A floating dream
is better than sinking awake.
It is time the great apes
reconsidered the trees.
A world of wood is waiting
in bins and garages.
To be fastened by nail and trunk.
To be three sided.
To move in the muscle of the wind.

_______
Airini told me once that I could do whatever I liked with her poems. So here's another one from her collection 'Western Line.'  They get their hooks into you these Airini poems. No, that's not right, they circle around, touching my elbow, tickling my feet. So I think, where's that book gone? And I get up to go and find it. It's in the upstairs study.

As Mark is bidden to do, Airini floats outside of the usual stuff of poetry - this is a romantic poem but in a fairytale way rather than a cheesy 'romantic' way. She writes often and unselfconsciously of hearts, especially young men's hearts, and travelling and trees. Airini watches people a lot, and loves them. This is her skill.

I'm not quite sure I get this poem, in fact, but I like it all the same. You can read some of the other Love Poems here (there are more - and Curses and Tricks and Charms!)

Then do go to the Tuesday Poem hub where Janis Freegard is editor and her poet this week is Wellington poet Viv Plumb with a very Wellington poem!

2 comments:

Kathleen Jones said...

I really love this poem - it floats about just out of reach - as a good poem should!

Helen Rickerby said...

Those varied and various love poems were my favourite section of Western Line. I think that I especially liked that they, like this one, aren't what we expect from something called a 'love poem' - love in it's widest possible sense. Lovely. Thanks Mary!