Two Poems by Lorelei Bacht
/To get lost is to learn the way.
I am a miner descending
for deposits. I mine whatever blocks
the light, whatever pools, sulphurs,
oxides – my task is to bring it to the
surface, inspect: I name, I tag, I list and I
bar chart - this, this and that. Some of us
moths ascend. Not I. Instead, I pick,
drill, shaft deeper into these slabs
of black, barely remembering the rope,
the trap. They sent me down because
I am a child. Only very small things
descend this dark. I heard you call:
teatime. I heard you call: bedtime. But I
am not finished inspecting these
trenches. There might be anglerfish,
luminescence. I am a miner descending
for grief: yours, mine. Whatever you
lost at the bottom, I am bound to find.
My heart a road-kill, and I am the sea
My heart a road-kill, and I am the sea
that longs for fish long gone: I grew
him in circles, him in ripples, him gone
by daybreak, by daylight, light-years a line
of traffic signs, stop sign, stopped red,
stop dead in someone else's track. You:
truck-driver, you fisherman, you needle-
fish, blue jaw long gone, you rot. I grew
you in ripples, round in circles, then grew
you gone, you right through traffic signs,
stop lines, you road-kill stopped dead -
someone else's track, morning capsized,
but not sinking, not returning to arms
of undertow. Not the morning I know.
Now, watch out for stoplights, taillights,
revolving phosphorus of the lighthouse
now dis-repaired, now disarrayed, now
gone, our hearts into the road-kill truck,
one more go round the ocean round -
around the ebb and flow of maybe yes,
maybe maybe, or maybe no, we go.
Author’s Note: “To get lost is to learn the way” is an African proverb. One night, while I was sitting on the porch listening to the rain and descending into my own darkness, it somehow coalesced with the opening line of ‘Nick and the Candlestick’ by Sylvia Plath, which I have been carrying in my head for decades: “I am a miner. The light burns blue.” The poem wove itself there and then.
“My heart is a road-kill, and I am the sea”: This poem is the result of allowing sounds and repetitions to lead my writing, as a remedy for intellectualism. I was trying to resolve a particular personal issue, but none of my journaling, talking to friends or dissecting the issue seemed to work. I wondered: what would happen if I did not try to make any sense? This poem offered itself as a perfect map of my confusion.
Lorelei Bacht (she/they) successfully escaped grey skies and red buses to live and write somewhere in the monsoon forest. Their recent writing has appeared and/or is forthcoming in After the Pause, Barrelhouse, The Bitchin' Kitsch, SWWIM, The Inflectionist Review, Sinking City, Door is a Jar, and elsewhere. They are also on Instagram: @lorelei.bacht.writer and on Twitter @bachtlorelei.
