Mary Hastilow
The Kissing Gate
Before the untamed marble muscle
of the headland,
at the start of the free run
out and over and down
the ruffled tussocks
clump-jumping in a tussle
with the asphyxiating dunes,
hidden from the hidden sea
whose inky turquoise fills the bay
twice a day, and soothes
the glittering sand bar.
Between the shaved meadow
and the close-cropped tawny fur of the bluff
there’s a loose puzzle,
a leaky valve,
an invitation to dance
a close shuffle with a tangle
of uprights and verticals.
Dividing the grass in here
from the grass out there is less of a gate
in the usual sense,
more of a go
at the game of boundaries
with its kissing rhythm
and melody of hinges and rust,
a spry, lackadaisical
loose-limbed waltzer,
hillside schmaltzer,
a two-way trickster
who yields so easily
to both sides
equally, holding a moment
in the arms of an echo,
in the spell between the clang and ring
of an openwork bell
whose slender jaws become
mutual claws of yin and yang
revealing the skill
of a passer-by’s turning touch,
not to hammer the wrought tongue
rudely back in place
but return it
as a tender elemental embrace.
Page(s) 170
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