Anthesis in the city
Anthesis in the city
Kate Millar
Not far from here, there is water lapping, a tidal bore
like fabric draping over the ground. The water sings
of peace––but carries pain. The Hudson has been flooded
with 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls
from the General Electric manufacturing plants. Settling
into the riverbed sediment, the chemicals remain
over ninety years later. They bioaccumulate, the toxicity
multiplies. I hear you question where does the spirit hover
here? See the tree roots disrupt the cobblestones, see
how the brown breaks open the grey. Go down deep
enough and you will find an iron core.
Beneath the man-built entities of light and cloud,
the stacked glass, even the manufactured thicket,
though you resent it––it is still the earth.
Though you fear claypan, a separative layer,
a stratum in soil that blocks the movement of water
and root growth––the idea of the impenetrable––
there is connective tissue: saxifrage that can split stone,
a box of tissues offered at the back of a church
to dry the cheeks of someone crying in prayer.
The iron core is a hollow globe containing water.
Bright iron’s song is silence. Listen. Still yourself
on the earth. You will find that feeling from childhood
when you thought you sensed the planet rotate on its axis,
that spinny-ness you felt as you closed your eyes and held
your body still, for long enough. You will hear a silence
underneath the layers of the city’s noise. The sparrow’s insistence
on West 11 th Street: staccato chirps like the sharp sound
of scissors cutting paper. Slicing air into silence. It is still
yourself on the earth. You are not disembodied. You are
carbon matter, sinews and bone. You are a concretion: layered
accumulation of moments and collected things: compliments
like your eyes are the jewels of your body, and vases full of lilies
from the field. You are the memories of touch: the crook
of your best friend’s neck, their fingertips wiping mud
from your eyelids. You share the anatomy of botany:
veins, teeth, ovaries, head, spine. You thirst for water
from the earth’s stratosphere, from the earth’s core.
Kate Millar
Writer & Poet
Kate is a 22-year-old poet from Edinburgh, Scotland. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at The New School in New York City. She was the Principal’s Scholar and Lawson Memorial Prize winner at The University of St Andrews for her studies in English literature. Her writing has appeared in A New Ulster and Lucent Dreaming.
Photography by Solvej Nielsen