1.
It must be a great love
to be accompanied by lightning
across the wide, wet plain of night
(how else will my voice carry?)
I stretch an arm through darkness
like a silent running river, unstoppable.
I am the rippling stripes of traffic, a golden fan
that sweeps your face at intervals. Sleep on,
but if that isn’t tender, what is. What is
2.
The August rains are harder than ever, lashing out blunt truths
in dreams. My sobs are flash storms, but you linger like sunburn,
the bronzed flush of apples, or rosé that goes to my head.
Blackberry-stained, my lips graze the sky, suck in blue heat,
no words, just that much sweetness. A tart, impatient taste.
Under the pear-tree, love is the residue of bruised fruit
where wasps scrawl messages in gold. At night,
I too spread butter and amber honey, pour the cool milk
like a balm, in a pale stream of light—
a white slab, an invitation slipped under the door.
3.
I pick stars by the handful: summer daisies, and coconut-scented
fingerprints in my book. Small letters smudged on soft expanses
of skin, the waves of a desert. Tattooed hieroglyphs.
We are pages and pages of sunlight. How everything shines:
words, white heat stretched like a swimming costume
over tanned sweetgrass.
Thoughts crawl drowsily across a blue towel.
I put my ear to the earth:
a heartbeat in clover. An orange ball
thuds the court, the sun can reach you
in a slow arc. I throw desire like a disc,
glowing bee circling
with nectared precision.
Catherine Iversen (née Nelson) is a Norwegian native and linguist living in Copenhagen writing travel content for her other homeland, France. Experienced in luxury brand communication, she now evokes the sensual world through genres like haiku, ekphrasis, intuitive prose and poetry; probing nature, mythology and the human heart with subtle precision. A keen pianist, she seeks to bring the musicality of words to life.