To Earth and Other Poems

By Claire O’Brien

To Earth

What more can you give me?
Only the soft squeak of your sands on my feet,
your sea’s sparkle and glint,
your sky’s blue and white cotton dress.

What more can you give up to me?
Only rustling forests
with tiny flitting life,
ancient stones.

I have gleaned all I need
from your green, your shine, 
your flesh, your fruit,
your glittery graves of treasure.

What more can you surrender
but slow rain licking the leaves,
sunflowers returning my gaze,
pulsing breath from lilliputian lungs?

I have subdued and used you,
split you with my axe of asphalt.
Bow to my biology
I have consumed you.

Woman

A woman rises from the earth,
made from warm bony trees
and pulsing water,
blood and spidery nerves.

She has strong shoulders and velvety odors,
hands that tend and shove,
heart that hurts and treasures,
body that delivers new life.

She wants….  wants….  wants……

She seasons on this land,
she sinks into this dust
and blows away.
And blows away.

City Street Clip

Grey whiskered chin sunk into grimy coat collar,
he shuffles the asphalt,
street smells of old life and plumed exhaust,
slate-hued cars rev and idle.

At curbside old worn shoes,
scuffed and draped with shiny trouser legs
and smoked ash stains,
tread with unsteady pace.

Shaky old dry hand
leans on the smeared silver button.
He slopes across the black dead road,
fingers splayed with momentary power.

Then trudges with old visions
down the slanting lane,
steep so his lean is backwards,
into the past.

Claire O’Brien is an active nature lover and lives beside a river on the coast of Queensland, Australia. She is an emerging writer and has won prizes in Australian Poetry competitions.  She writes poetry and essays.