Avalanche

Janis Freegard Click to read more...

FreegardJanis Freegard is the author of the poetry collection Kingdom Animalia: The Escapades of Linnaeus (Auckland University Press, 2011) and co-author of AUP New Poets 3 (2008). A chapbook, The Continuing Adventures of Alice Spider: A Selection, is forthcoming from Anomalous Press. Janis also writes fiction and is a past winner of the BNZ Katherine Mansfield Award.  She was born in South Shields, England and lived in South Africa and Australia before her family settled in New Zealand.  She lives in Wellington and she writes a blog about poetry.

Janis Freegard – Avalanche
She was made of rock,
had a massive stride,
a stone ship lurching into dock,
lumbering down the mountainside.

She had a massive stride:
showers of pebbles flew up as she went,
lumbering down the mountainside
on her unstoppable descent.

Showers of pebbles flew up as she went
unseeing – blinded by rage, I thought,
on her unstoppable descent
– or was she just distraught?

That was it, not anger, as I’d thought.
I could see, by the shaking of her shoulders
she was blinded by tears, distraught.
She came to rest by a boulder;

I saw, by the shaking of her shoulders
how easily rock can stumble.
She came to rest by a boulder.
Love leads us all to crumble.

How easily rock can stumble!
And she was made of rock.
Love caused her to crumble,
a stone ship lurching into dock.


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