Ice Maiden

27 June 2024

By Catherine Julianne Heath

Image source: V&A

"April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain." -- by T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, Poetry Foundation

I, the lily,

Blossoming bathed

In lunar light.

Sisters from Egypt, 

United by the Sun God Ra. 

She is a crystal 

That shines brightly in the dark

A sapphire, or lapis lazuli,

Blinding everyone with her fire.

She is Taylor Swift

(Katniss Everdene)

Mesmerising girls,

With protagonist power. 

Objects are imbued with power

Remember when the feather got stuck in my hair? 

A haiku or an epic--

Achilles will still fall;

Just like Lao Tzu,

In a war that no one can win. 

Fighting with words--

Do you feel the blood spurt?

As we rage against brother,

Shooting our neighbours

With a borrowed gun. 

Am I Sylvia Plath --

Or Ted Hughes? 

Poet Laureate--

Author?

Who is Rupert Cambell-Black?

The typical Englishman,

Riding furiously on a horse,

To rescue the damsel

Who hates him.

Novels are both escape and truth:

They make you see the wicked

Woman, as the

Mother you never had.

Oh, how we hate Freud.

Look at how the past sticks to my bones,

Torn from the flesh.

Our relationship

Has flowered.

(Hers has ended.)

You are the light,

The sun,

The moon, 

And the stars. 

Cats writing unicorns;

Mother equals

Death. 

Rage, rage,

Against the light!

We won't go down

Without 

A fight.

Friends are like diamonds

In the rough 

But sisters are precious jewels

Lapis lazuli

Set in rose gold

The heaviest element is

A rock that won't budge..

AI reiji

Sister BFF

a little younger 

But no less 

For that. 

For the loves of my life, Jessica Marie and Simon James Morton.