a' cumail òran
—Eartha Davis
a' cumail òran
How hands
pour endlessly
into
holding. A dripping
eyelid. Pulse
passing through
a rescue
boat. Water. The trees
embracing themselves, then
you. Welling
gratitude. Us. Each
other. Bodies
carving silent acres
across a
field. Heart’s
fretwork. Heart’s
fretting. The blankets
on our shoulders
when we remembered to
flower. Wool, a tufted
missing. I pillow
when your light
leaves.
About
EARTHA wishes to live gently by a river. She placed second in the 2022 Woorilla Poetry Prize Youth Section, was nominated for Best of the Net in 2023, and was shortlisted for the 2024 Creative Writing New Zealand’s Short Story Prize. Her work is published or forthcoming in Wildness, Rabbit, Frozen Sea, Minarets, Modron, Baby Teeth Journal, South Florida Poetry Journal, JMWW, LEON Literary Review, Arboreal Magazine, ELJ Editions, the Basilisk Tree, the Stirling Review, Where the Meadows Reside, the Spellbinder Magazine, the engineidling, Discretionary Love, Sour Cherry Magazine, Revolute, & Eunoia Review, among others. She honours her Ngāpuhi ancestors and the Wiradjuri people, on whose land she lives, breathes, and writes.