Maybes

This is breath. The orchard shadows laddering an Autumn way out.
I follow the windfall of dead sparrows, to an evening where Time’s vapours
wet their little bones. I tell my dog that I have seen grief come small as birds.
You were one thing. And people come and go. In the orchard I am king
to the passages of persimmon and fig, and the dog finds me worthy.
This is a music video where I look sad in technicolour and women dance
at my hips and the petals come away. If I am lonely, it is loneliness
that I am cool blooded and blued as the hills. At the gallery someone
will say the blue hills represent the fever dream of somebody so distant
he touches love in its purist form. But I am not that person. This is breath.
The dog watches my palms for happiness. I let him down.
We collect sparrows like they might ripen into laughter, two by two.
My dog and I guard them,
little maybes.

Elizabeth Morton

Elizabeth Morton is a yarn teller, poem maker, and neuroscience enthusiast from Tāmaki Makaurau. Her latest collection of poetry is Naming the Beasts (Otago University Press, 2022).