Olivia Byard: Two Poems

Once they moored a heavy boat
to the upstream Erie riverside;
reeled a vessel out on a hawser

through tough water above
the Falls, that stretch of race and tumble,
slew and chew of flow,

to a point where no fight back,
paddle, or engine race, could
top the edge’s pull.

There, the rope would either hold
while they winched it in, or fray
and break; the vessel be lost.

I urgently scan this muscular
scene. Is the spot just there,
in white roughness?

Or there, by blown budding trees
on islands where birds nest,
secure; oblivious?

Olivia Byard

Proximity (Oxfordshire, England)

The eucalyptus has flowered
in all this rain—freighted bunches
of fur-edged blossom

For six years it’s struggled
with our weather to reach this state
of sexual maturity. Its bark

raveled up, spring leaves
browned and fell, and we’d
phone Toowoomba where

Penny would search outside
in her tropical garden
before loaning us relief.

Bees snuffle into its petals
this first bright morning in a while
humming their pleasure;

but where will they bear
its strange pollen on their feet?

Olivia Byard