My Echoed Instants
I have a fondness for my breath before my eyes unfold,
before nature wakes, when nature caresses, when nature is at ease,
before memories are lost in poker hand and air vacates threefold.
I have an affinity for magpies grass-pillaging, tiny plume moss mold
shielding stumps, stones—tall grass, wildflowers in shifting breeze.
I have a fondness for my breath before my eyes unfold.
I have a hunger for fresh curry from Jamaican Blue Mountains, bold
flavor with scotch bonnet seasoned days, my bursting tongue agrees,
before memories are lost in poker hand and air vacates threefold.
I thirst sun-dances along the skin, trilling thrushes oak-tree leaves enclose,
the warmth coating, rain vapors spraying, instant fog breath seizing.
I have a fondness for my breath before my eyes unfold.
I have a proclivity for autumn-deserted-coast sunrises in hazy marigold
or sunsets painting cumulonimbus clouds beyond the mountain crease,
before memories are lost in poker hand and air vacates threefold.
Snow piling on leaves, ice coating beech branches, Galanthus petals exposed
from snow before cherry blossom petals fall, after glacier falls unfreeze.
I have a fondness for my breath before my eyes unfold,
before memories are lost in poker hand and air vacates threefold.
Mervyn Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness and poetry craft for humane growth. The Spalding MFA graduate, London-born Jamaican, appears in AGNI, Salamander, and 75 other journals in 13 countries, and a 2021/2023 Pushcart Nominee. His collection is “Stick, Hook, and a Pile of Yarn,” Broken Sleep Books.