Last light
‘There is a coherence in things …’ Virginia Woolf—To the Lighthouse
I’ve made a tradition of chasing sunsets
all the distal way to the lighthouse,
through the blushing last breath of day,
to watch as the tall ecru tower
ignites a shawl of light
through violet dusk.
I see the candles my mother placed
in our bay windows lashed with sea-spray
& think how love is like a shining ruby,
while tides drift, sunlight fades.
Fog
You read aloud today’s
‘Did you know’ …
‘in your dreams you cannot smell?’
and I tell you
how strange, all night
I dreamed
that the air was frosted
so thickly across the city,
mist breathing into everything,
then I caught sight of your face,
fear vanished.
Losing my senses
had never felt so welcome.
The only thing in focus,
were your dreamy eyes,
the rest indistinct,
fog-draped.
Jazmín
‘Como un ciego, regresé al jazmín de la gastada primavera humana.’ Pablo Neruda
A constellation of fumes and dust
the aureole streets shine
laced with ivy, buildings, lined
with stalls of jasmine
woody stalks, bursting blooms
in stellar hues
vanilla-yellow, opal and white,
sweet, heady
and impatient.
The city, a grand cemetery,
air timelessly glides
past tombs of buildings,
a mingling of flowers, half-dried and pink marble.
Stalked by sunset,
the light begins to fray as
I hold up jasmine to the dusk
and memorialise this day.
BIO
Leila Lois is a woman of Kurdish and Celtic heritage, who identifies as bisexual, and who has lived most of her life in Aotearoa. In her poems, Leila explores a personal sense of origin that, like the ocean, binds several landscapes and times, coming back to the idea that a timeless, boundless love pervades. Her publishing history includes Southerly, Djed Press, Right Now, Lite Lit One, Delving Into Dance and Salient.
Bent Street 