SAM SAMPSON

 

Flushed From A Tidal Retreat

 
                in the deep-freeze we 
        will feel no pain 
 
                just go to sleep (as if winter was coming) 
                                it is ‘asleep’ 
 
                        as in Rosei’s dream 
        watermarked origami 
 
from the fold                 butter- 
        fly logic 
                        to be : becalmed 
 
afloat with the telling 
        sail said the lullaby 
 
                scissoring         and… captioned 
 
… 
 
        elevation        commotion and roseate histrionics 
 
to see hills I didn’t even know existed | rain transforming this patch | spring eagles 
returning to the same nest | bodies — each in foetal position | suicidal Inuit youth 
shackled hand-to-heart… 
 
                                                                                                … 
 
            quieter moments when fights for food abate 
 
… fog shrouds Snyder lake | a deer fords the main branch | riparian light blinking on a 
dark field | the grotto where tradition states Jesus was born, 
 
            after descendants, not everyone believes : believes, fragrant pastures 
celebrate love | jaguar dancers torment the mineral kingdom, and the whorls (many 
coated) turn … El Niño churns in, disarming | the last war is not over 
 
… 
 
                under the masked avatar 
the body wills its incarnation 
 
        … electrical improvisations 
 
                        the young born miniature adjuncts 
 
                (((collisions beneath the moon))) 
 
        ghost moths generate night skirmishes 
 
                        wing-tips 
 
shadowing the wall 
 
                they balance at mechanical rest 
 
        a fold: one ghost upon 
 
                        another 
 
                                … 
 
leverage in memory 
 
                    a rift between 
        for instance     try 
                to replace 
 
(mis-en-scène) 
                no need for excavations 
        the process gifted 
 
                grown in wild streams 
 
FLUSHED FROM A TIDAL RETREAT 
        RUSHED FROM A TIDAL RETREAT 
                Shhh. 
 

She is Sparrow-like and Fierce

 
 I’ll tie myself to her voice 
 
scene pulled from frame to frayed edge 
                knot-to-knot…to pull backwards that tapestry of dress 
 
                                (yes, the pattern returns triumphant) 
                                        crux of the matter, to go on…wistfully 
 
                                                        could not she? 
 
                                        of course life-lines feeding the concrete 
 
                                clear-cut she is sparrow-like and fierce, 
                        thin…angular, with the hollow-eyed look 
 
        she could reach people with her mimicry 
                a little melancholic roust 
 
an elegiac circus        and under this whirling 
        her manic joy…streaming in and out-of-breath. 
 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sam Sampson was born in Auckland, and grew up in South Titirangi, next to Little Muddy Creek. Everything Talks, his first collection of poems, was published by Auckland University Press (NZ), and Shearsman Books (UK) in June 2008. It won the Jessie McKay NZSA Best First Book of Poetry at the 2009 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. For more information visit his website.

Flushed From A Tidal Retreat: The oldest unequivocal document of origami is a short comic poem composed by Ihara Saikaku in 1680. It reads: Rosei-ga yume-no cho-wa orisue (The butterflies in Rosei’s dream would be origami). The Rosei in my poem is lifted from this source. In the second and third stanzas, there is a blended, embedded, and overlapped assortment of found fragments cut from National Geographicmagazines by artist Peter Madden. The title is one of these fragments.

 

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