Katy Evans-BushRadio Silence
I walked the forest wearing shoes I’d made of wood
— platforms, roughly sliced with leather strings to tie —
the sound they made among dry leaves was like the sound
you hear between the stations when the signal’s lost.
I cut a lemon so its innards looked like hair,
while words I knew — like PITH, or ZEST — dissolved, and I
watched in amazement as the strands assumed their form
and in them they held coloured signs of everything.
The priests said cutting lemons was a kind of prayer.
The wooden shoes were made to take me out of where
I’d gone by accident. There was a floating boy.
Both lemon and the wooden shoes came from the earth;
I couldn't think of anything that’s from the sky.
A radio silence fell about me where I stood.
© 2009
Salt Publishing Limited