Tuesday Poem: Waterfall, by Marisa Cappetta

waterfall

It starts as
the father and his daughters,

his love for them
enough to fill a balloon
and sail over
the Colosseum over the Tiber
and onto London.
His love a warm air rising,
playful as a thermal.

His girls tumble
from the basket
he scans the land below

but his daughter's beds
are empty and smell
of earth, leaves
and the pummel of
water on wet stone.

He finds one of their
shoes behind the waterfall.

At night
his eyes are silos
filled with a warm air,
rising.

This week's offering for Tuesday Poem is another of Marisa Cappetta's lovely poems filled with lush imagery. Marisa is a Christchurch visual artist and poet, currently studying at the Hagley Writers' Institute. The poem was published in the latest issue of Takahe magazine, where Marisa says
When writing I gather ideas, text, articles and objects in the literary equivalent of a visual diary. I produce 'thumbnails' of writing in frames, mind maps, balloon diagrams and flow charts. In this format I test phrases and ideas in various configurations; the process is often playful, easily allowing me to experiment.

Tuesday Poem: Young Woman Marries the Farmer's Son, by Marisa Capetta

young woman marries the farmer's son

your first voice is the moon
suspended in billows
of red dam water

courtship brushes silent
black beetles from the hem
of my white cotton skirt

kiss me in summer hay paddocks
in a fox scented dawn,
on gravel roads along
barbed wire fences

white silk organza is stained
by glass bees our vows
are door frames in eroded mud
walls unroofed by a siege

of bougainvillea our vows are carved
in the flesh of small windfall apricots
and fit whole in our mouths

© Marisa Capetta 2010

Marisa Capetta is a Christchurch jewellery designer and poet. She was born in Rome and has lived in the USA and New Zealand.

Marisa read this poem towards the end of last year at one of the gapfiller events. Gapfiller is an organisation aiming to make creative use of the many blank spaces in our city where earthquake damaged buildings have been demolished. I was happy to read recently that they have received some City Council funding, so that they will be able to have more events.

I was captivated by Marisa's mysterious and lush use of language in this poem.

For Tuesday Poem.