EVE WOOD: POETRY Six Published By Cherry Grove Collections, 2005 www.cherry-grove.com Catherine Of Aragon, November 4, 1535 The moon overtakes the trees, awash in false light, and the ravens breed fiercely in the eaves of Kimbolton castle. I hear the small ticking of their tongues when they kiss. My heart continues its fall to ground until the young horseman, come from so far, knocks it away in a single sideways lunge, his mare kicking it into the moat. It floats there for days, nearly agnostic, drained of its blood. The sluggish water, infected with mud collects in its chambers, unnerved by such emptiness. See it move under the bridge, transparent, depleted, a brief humility on the water. Jane Seymour, January 12, 1537 For Pat I love best the one tree in the garden that dies daily. A low hanging monument to God that will not lift itself, I wonder if the air around it is infected, or the birds with hemlock on their breath, breathe there. A piece of loose bark folds into itself like the tiny hand of a dead baby. Cut the tree down, and it will come back as a voice. You can hear it carried along when the wind is high. It's the same sound a child makes coming up for breath in a pool of deep water. The tree that is the voice tells the garden it's gone missing, but the only reply the garden knows is the springing of new life. Anne of Cleves, January 17, 1540 A blind man painted my portrait, who sold it to a deaf man who gave it to the king. When he sent for me, I apologized for the discrepancy, explaining I could not alter the shape of my face, nor would it give me pleasure to appear as any other woman. He ordered the chamber maid to sew a small pouch made of silk for my head, and when that did not take, he made adamantine of his heart. I remember a single swollen vein protruding from his forehead, where he held his anger and his fear of me as he laid me out to muster himself to the task, only to cast a shadow over my face with his hand. Katherine Howard, February 13, 1542 Maelstrom at the center of the oak You would not know it Only a whisper as the bark falls Birds pick it up and bring it back to start their babies in a small dry place Silence the epicenter of the bird Around it chatter to hide what is true Oak is the shoulder in the field and the tight naked elm stands fingering the sky People are talking around my head and the oak creaks its arms fat and wide in the wind People are talking all around my head as it falls