Mandy Pannett
PETRICHOR
I am Petrichor, scent of rain
on your sun-scalded earth.
Is this still a sentient land?
You pay homage to sight and sound, touch
another’s hot flesh on a sweaty night, taste salt
in the crinkle of chips.
And smell? Shall I remind you
how good it is – clean air, cool air, raindrops
splashing on tarmac?
Fugitive dust chokes your throat.
Exhausted you teeter at the roadside like one
who would fish for wild garlic
with a child’s toy net.
Water on the shoreline is thick with scum.
A mat of blue-green algae stifles the miniature.
Plastic debris begins to smell like food.
In dangerous open waters
sea creatures who are lost
no longer can sniff out their eggs.
Somewhere in the overlap
or in the space between things that once
were not so separate
blood and sap may meet.
That quest is yours.
I am not your solution, only an echo of water on stone
and the earthy-red smell of beetroot.
ON CAPITOL HILL
No longer a coo, an amorous call,
white-feather soft as a purr. Perhaps
it’s a coop, a void, a cage, oubliette
in the dark or a tomb for a headless
chicken? They cry it’s a coup, a coup
d’état, a crashing, a crushing of stabs
in the back, a seizure, a vomit, one
coup de foudre’s lightning zip– it’s not
any of these. The mirror is splitting, le
miroir noir, and there’s trodden-on glass
on the sole of each foot in this abattoir
where l’état, c’est moi is graffiti on walls
and the calf becomes veau and the cow
with son moo plaintif is le boeuf sanglant.
IN AMBER
he’s master of the conditional the illusion of what ifs
would have could have should have might
an era of possibilities
with no bright expansive vista no lungfuls of breath
sounds in his brain are thudding all day and under the moon
wouldhavecouldhaveshouldhavemight
paralysed he’s a wasp in amber
desire slips past regret slips past
lament’s a distant refrain
would have should have might
I am Petrichor, scent of rain
on your sun-scalded earth.
Is this still a sentient land?
You pay homage to sight and sound, touch
another’s hot flesh on a sweaty night, taste salt
in the crinkle of chips.
And smell? Shall I remind you
how good it is – clean air, cool air, raindrops
splashing on tarmac?
Fugitive dust chokes your throat.
Exhausted you teeter at the roadside like one
who would fish for wild garlic
with a child’s toy net.
Water on the shoreline is thick with scum.
A mat of blue-green algae stifles the miniature.
Plastic debris begins to smell like food.
In dangerous open waters
sea creatures who are lost
no longer can sniff out their eggs.
Somewhere in the overlap
or in the space between things that once
were not so separate
blood and sap may meet.
That quest is yours.
I am not your solution, only an echo of water on stone
and the earthy-red smell of beetroot.
ON CAPITOL HILL
No longer a coo, an amorous call,
white-feather soft as a purr. Perhaps
it’s a coop, a void, a cage, oubliette
in the dark or a tomb for a headless
chicken? They cry it’s a coup, a coup
d’état, a crashing, a crushing of stabs
in the back, a seizure, a vomit, one
coup de foudre’s lightning zip– it’s not
any of these. The mirror is splitting, le
miroir noir, and there’s trodden-on glass
on the sole of each foot in this abattoir
where l’état, c’est moi is graffiti on walls
and the calf becomes veau and the cow
with son moo plaintif is le boeuf sanglant.
IN AMBER
he’s master of the conditional the illusion of what ifs
would have could have should have might
an era of possibilities
with no bright expansive vista no lungfuls of breath
sounds in his brain are thudding all day and under the moon
wouldhavecouldhaveshouldhavemight
paralysed he’s a wasp in amber
desire slips past regret slips past
lament’s a distant refrain
would have should have might
© Copyright Mandy Pannett 2021
Mandy Pannett works freelance as a creative writing tutor. She is the author of four poetry collections and two novellas. A new collection, Crossing the Hinge, is scheduled for publication by KFS Press in 2021.