two poems by

Laura van Diesen

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  • Waltz for Body and Water

    (Lightly swung, cantabile)

    The sea is all uncaring mouth,
    but still, speak to her. Step into the shore,
    worry the edges of her conversation—

    she is always talking about the moon
    (about her or to her,
    I can’t make out the syllables,
    but they both are never silent).

    She goes back and forth,
    and the moon maybe leads.
    Maybe takes her by the hand, and leads—

    Oma says she knew how to dance
    when she was my age.

    I think of a waltz, where my partner
    would lead. I follow the tap of his feet
    on the village hall floors.
    We practise again and
    again, like the sea does.

    The sea and the moon
    have been together
    for longer than waltzing.

    (I know the sea for that
    back and forth, that pendulum swing;
    all the grooves of it.

    I know how it is to pace in circles.
    I know the sea for her
    mouth.)

    Trace the outline of the coast with body and
    know how she devours.
    How she twirls hair like
    seaweed, just to braid
    into the seabed.

    How she would do all this, and
    still talk about the moon. Reply.
    Whisper to the rocks that once sank

    to her stomach

    (they mutter to themselves about
    when they were Giants, and how she
    has changed them.
    Something about the fire, and what
    has been taken—

    the dead flesh of a volcano,
    and they’re still talking about a fire
    that happened
    when the sea was young,

    but I know about limerence. I know
    about coldness).

    Talk. Chatter like a baby bird,
    Hop over a sand dune. Learn the
    rhythm of the coast.

    Find some sea glass and pretend
    it is a gift. Speak a secret into a shell,
    hope that it gossips.

    ‍ ‍Of course, I think about walking in.

    Sea teases me,
    stepping closer, then shying away.
    I get caught in her magnetism.

    I don’t know how to lead,
    and the sea foam giggles at my clumsiness.
    She won’t listen, only laughs—
    she won’t teach how to lead or
    be led without
    consuming me.

    Instead, I listen and
    talk, until my heart beats in
    threes.

    I know a friend
    who knows someone
    who sold an old house that had footprints
    worn into the floor in
    sets of threes.

    I thought it would take centuries to scar wood
    into the rhythm of a waltz,
    but it turns out, all you need is constancy.

    I dig my feet into the sand,
    but I know I cannot be so permanent.
    I get led astray. The waltz ends.

    Line 12 -  Oma is the name for grandmother in Dutch.

  • Eavesdropping at the Forest's Bed

    When I wake up before her,
    I walk to her bedside and
    listen, if she lets me.

    I duck past trees covering forest’s mouth,
    treading carefully so as not to wake her up.

    I walk on her soft belly of
    mud and leaves, and
    sink for a moment
    while Earth decides
    what to do with me.

    I feel mud breathing
    beneath my feet, and
    wonder what she is thinking.
    I brush branches past my face,
    unearthing Spring like a child
    tugging on her mother’s sleeve –

    I am here, even if she doesn’t listen. The canopy is a veil drawn over my head. It
    chirps and mutters about something I could never understand, and I listen.

    A squirrel stands and
    stares for a moment
    of held breath –

    if I could scutter through wood and be part of this forest
    instead of breathing through these lungs, I would. I say this to
    the squirrel in a moment’s glance, and it replies by blinking.
    Closing a glint of sunlight in beady nighteyes.

    I’m not sure we understand one another,
    and I apologise to the leaves for this –
    for my clumsiness, for the time I crushed a
    snail shell under my
    boot.

    I am just too big, balancing on fault lines of this
    forest skin. When I run through leaf pyres and
    dry dirt, my lungs taste like blood,
    and I give her sounds of
    heart swimming and
    lungs drinking sycamore air,
    becoming the mouth of a river –

    a graceless sacrifice, but she accepts:
    my body for her breath,
    my inhale for her exhale.

    I breathe more fully than ever: breathe out clouds and cobwebs and
    and bug bites and stolen teeth and dirt and half-healed knees, and
    when she hands them back,
    they taste like willowbark.

    There are invisible exchanges such as this
    all the time, Child.

    The canopy sighs, heavy with bird claws, but
    impossibly green, soft around the edges.

    Together we make
    the most ancient
    blood pact girls
    ever form:

    between their bodies and
    their mother, Earth.

On
‘Waltz for Body and Water’

Poet’s commentary

I wrote Waltz for Body and Water after noticing the rhythmic patterns of the tide at the seaside, being inspired to depict the gravitational pull of the moon and its effect upon the tides as a dance. Waltz is part of a larger collection titled ‘Mother, Earth,’ which challenges how literature historically only feminises nature when it is ‘gentle’ to illustrate the notion that women are naturally docile. On the beach, I found igneous rocks that might be millions of years old, and wanted to depict how the sea not only transcends human history, but also the traditional attributes of gender. By mentioning a dance I might have learned if I was born in my grandmother’s generation and feminising the sea, I intertwine human narratives with forces of nature, so the patterns of the tide represent the gravitational pull of convention.  

​

The speaker is a distant observer of the ancient relationship between the sea and the moon, unsure of how to place herself within either human tradition or nature due to the vastness of both. The depiction of nature as gentle is therefore subverted by presenting the sea as powerful and consuming, just as how women may be metaphorically consumed by traditional narratives of relationships and ideal femininity. I visually imitate the swung rhythm of a waltz and the patterns of tides through my employment of form. It also implicitly imitates the swinging of a clock and the ‘back and forth,’ of the speaker with the concept of time and the patterns of human relationships. The left side begins as a set of performance instructions, yet the right side struggles with these, and ultimately culminates in the waltz ending. It is not so much the ‘end’ of tradition, as the sea’s tides continue, but it signals a possible beginning for the speaker, away from traditional ‘dance.’ This is likened to Fleabag’s quote ‘it’ll pass,’ as the devastation of having to wait for love to ‘pass’ is associated with the emotional energy necessary to walk away from the gravity of tradition.

On ‘Eavesdropping at the Forest’s Bed’

Poet’s commentary

I wrote this poem after walking in a forest that was quite eerily silent and overgrown. I was considering the relationship that humans have with nature, and how people can form such a strong connection with it without having a shared language. To emphasise how tangible this connection can be, I use images of breathing to create a shared exchange between the protagonist and the forest surrounding her. I intend for this to depict the interdependency of humans with nature, as I find that nature is often regarded as something separate from humans, rather than humans forming a part of it. I wanted to create the figure of a child and her mother to demonstrate this relationship, as it shows both their struggles to understand one another, and the innate connection they share. I saw this as a miniature of the relationship that humans have with the earth: the apology for “clumsiness” is an allusion to the harm that humans have waged upon nature, and the impossibility of truly being able to apologise for this, even if accidental.

Laura
van Diesen

(she/her)

Laura enjoys writing poetry and short fiction that entwines human narratives with the natural. She is particularly interested in challenging traditional roles attributed to women through experimenting with form.