I am water
by Jackie Biggs
When sun is harsh
in afternoon
I kneel
scoop cool water
in cupped palms.
How fresh
and full in throat,
going down. I pull it in,
feel cleanness, greenness
fill all cells in body.
And lake reaches,
sucks me into itself
folds my heart in its currents,
where somehow I breathe,
move freely, and wonder
Where I come from,
where I will go.
Swim wild
allow lake to swallow me
into its peace.
Tiny fish flicker silver
around naked flesh.
Water murmurs secret stories,
makes music flow over body
and into me.
My beginning and ending,
place of depart and return,
to and fro
lapping the shore
sipping me
wanting me more.
Where I come from,
where I will go.
Cantre’r Gwaelod
by Jacie Biggs
(The lost land of Wales, in Cardigan Bay)
Down along the deep causeways ancient voices still call
over sunken villages, and bells toll from castle towers
above drowned ramparts and over-run dykes,
all swept away in a tide-swipe.
In the cool dark at the bottom of the bay
all I hear is whalesong calling over miles,
punctuated with dolphin clicks of greeting,
as a bottle-nose nudges gently from the side.
In the kind of sunlight you can only know here,
a reflection refraction shafts through fathoms
to tumblestones of seabed, where anemones linger.
Here is stillness in swamped cottage gardens
where pink corallina now bends its fronds,
golden brown tendrils of carragheen float,
furbellow fingers reach out to stroke
my drifting body. And bells toll the unseen hour …
Jackie Biggs’s second poetry collection, Breakfast in Bed, was published in Autumn 2019 by Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her first, The Spaces in Between was published in 2015. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She received a special mention in the 2020 Welsh International Poetry Competition, was Highly Commended in the same competition in 2019 and in the R S Thomas Festival Competition 2019. She is a member of the Rockhoppers – Coast to Coast Poets performance group. Some of her poetry appears on her blog: http://jackie-news.blogspot.co.uk Twitter: @JackieNews