Back, by Kate Copeland

Spring Landscape with Cows, by Hendrik Chabot (Netherlands) 1948

Back

Greener pastures I have never seen, nor such straight canals, much as rivers meandering, where surfaces ascend symmetrically in the greyer heavens up. All breathe below sea level but don't drown, won't brood, for here, here live the dunes, the dikes, their waterworks. Three seasons full of North-blue rain fall on trees, on plots, tomatoes, red and black-n-white cows. 

I used to not really think to stop and look, to admire works or flowers, my street with towers. I used to not even consider the fruits of the holy fields flooded, the cows full of heifer love, just cattle loyal, chewing-milking-meating us. Back now I bathe in the blinking lights, the waters in the sky, there are waves under bridges and I waken that I left for space to think, for silence to read like a writer. I left for spaces like lakes and oceans, still with a secret need of cities or crops. I saw a desert with volcanoes, where pride awkwardly surrounded my ears. The weeks turned to more weeks, as piles of paper to those I used to climb at home. Time and words noiselessly melted, the house such ghost of turbulence. I am losing face and details fade, much as memories stay. Mine, not yours. 
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And so I decided it was time, forward thinking, for where there are neither dunes, dikes nor the racing clouds like ours, there is where a desert sees the sea so unlike me. I asked my best friend to tape the greener grass, the vapour sky, some underground clangour to have the fields in hand, as I erased the pictures of the cotton candy clouds, the dust from my skirts. Your number too. About time. 

Kate Copeland

Kate Copeland started absorbing stories ever since a little lass. Her love for words led her to teaching and translating some sweet languages, her love for art, lyrics and water led her to poetry ...with some publications sealed already! She was born in Rotterdam some 51 ages ago and adores housesitting in the UK, America and Spain.