Anne Elvey – Solder

Elvey LE P&W 5 Nov-Dec 2024

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024

Solder, poems by Anne Elvey.


Solder

Intent to be other to the flow but lured, molten
into connectivity, the spill of psyche to circuit

lies hot against the binary that privileges
the one over the multiplicity. Honed to lift

of branch and soil’s pulse, the sun’s bidding
in green cell, nothing is zeroed in on souls

that hammer and haunt like early light. Or is it
speech? The tempest-telling sprites, acolytes

of climate, keep their fossiled tracts extant
in bones and breath, distillations of seeped stone.

These noughts with units on a grid, do they
discount the long mugging of the land? Bled

quarries – sunset captures them. Whose lives
are extracted for works that take natures from

selves, from our embedding in the commons? Is
fluid alloy’s response to flame a recompense?


Sophia

She came to me in a clearing
the quiet sun sifting through
trees’ canopy, the day soft

as moonlit night surrounding
heart’s dusk or dawn – might
I not tell? She was a breath

of knowing, tender against my
oldest scars though I could
not fathom what brought her

into my waking dream or why
when I look inside she remains
a subtle presence – discreet &

unassuming, as if a healing should
proceed, shy of the everyday
like a bat. Her body’s leathered

wings fold into limb & leaf.
Wind rustles in the shelter of her
foliate tilt towards grace


To the will maker of branching breath

Leave me the hospitality of words
how a good sentence can

salve, like an instrument’s compassion,
strummed tremor of line, fingers’

pulse on wood, or mallet to timpani –
how they ground an orchestra

with surprising character, warm and
low – a capacity to let be when

voice arrives – diaphragm, throat
ear – flowing like freedom, lungs

expanded. How then I’ll forget
hurt, forgive what’s unintended,

give to quiet the wholeness we’re
gravitating towards, as day

lets go and wind plays through
night’s yard, unsettled, soothing


© Anne Elvey

Anne Elvey is a poet, editor and researcher, living on unceded Bunurong Country in bayside Naarm/Melbourne. Her most recent poetry collections are Leaf (Liquid Amber Press, 2022), shortlisted in the 2023 ASLE-UKI Book Prize for the best work of creative writing with an ecological theme, and Obligations of voice (Recent Work Press, 2021). A new collection ‘Intents’ is forthcoming from Liquid Amber Press in April 2025.

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