The Elements of Love and more
Collections of Poems by
Zoë Pozniak-MacLeod
About the Author
Zoë is a 24-year-old South London based content creator and poet. She wrote her first collection of poems in 2019 entitled The Elements of Love describing her experiences with different forms of love for a radio project which can be found on her Soundcloud. Her new collection Forgotten Tides, an introspective look on the experience of loss and gain, is currently being collated.
THE ELEMENTS OF LOVE
How could I describe you?
You wild tempestuous thing.
That which births hope,
And takes away dreams.
The kindest and cruellest
Of all things that are, were and could never be.
How could I describe you?
But in the purest of things;
In water, ether, fire and earth
That drowns, loses, burns, and takes
That heals, finds, warms and gives
How could I describe you?
Who am I to know,
The whims and ways,
The truth and triumph,
Of the elements of love.
ETHER
As I arrived into the universe,
I was told,
One day I would live upon the moon.
So, I waited on a bed of clouds
Staring at the skies;
Asking stars and angels
When he would be mine.
Years passed and my eyes
Still clung to the moon.
I craved his stardust on my lips,
To be consumed by glowing silence.
But a whisperer touched my toe
With a drop of golden honey.
Filling me with sweet desire
One buried deep within;
To walk upon the earth,
To feel her wildness on my chest
And her sunsets kiss my cheek.
I knew I did not belong to the moon
Or the earth alike.
I flew into the ether
On fragmented light.
Here I lay in blissful lust
Somewhere in between.
Not for the moon or the earth,
But both of them for me.
THE FLAME
A flame arose and took my hand,
Burning brighter as I gave myself to it,
An innocence lost in ethereal glow.
The fire erupted cinders reading three words.
Yet the light I treasured was blinding.
I could not see the embers lie
As the flame danced with others.
I reached out searching for warmth,
And found a flickering match,
In a forest of burning trees.
I took my heart and blew it out,
But the fire had already scarred me.
FIREWORKS IN THE RAIN
Their false lights dance upon my eyes,
As the rain sleeps in different skies.
Not one sky – but two,
The sky I see and the sky that sees you.
A comforting trickle falls from heaven,
Creating dew drops to protect my skin.
I try to stand and clasp the water;
I fall, I snap, as our skies in two.
A blast, a crack, a drop – and you,
My love.
THE EVERGREEN
When cold winds come the others abandon their leaves,
But she will never lose the love she birthed.
Those same winds batter,
And the woodman bears his axe;
Yet she will not let go of her first leaf.
The snow does fall, and she cannot see
Why she clings to it always,
But the Sun arrives
And brings hope to her bones.
No wind, nor man, nor hurricane
Can stop the love she holds.
She dreams one day the leaf
Shall stand safely on its own;
And that she might rest in that safe mind.
But for now, perhaps forever,
She remains Evergreen.
A SUNKEN THING
I was never scared of water;
Always pulling out the floats
Going a little deeper
Touching the ocean floor.
But storm clouds came along,
Turning the water murky.
I swam on forgotten tides,
Suddenly submerged.
Dragged down by the current;
Spinning out my heart.
Sunken with the shipwrecks;
Forgetting how to swim,
Quietly accepting a new fate.
I dreamed of a gasp of air,
And learnt how to be free.
Now I see new waters
Of crystal-clear azure.
Of stars and sky and ice and warmth,
On this divine new Earth.
THE OLD MAN THAT NEVER WAS
I dreamt of you with grey hair,
Thick glasses on a chain.
I saw a biscuit tin of thread,
An antique rocking chair.
Plates adorned with little birds
Displayed proudly on a shelf.
Words of wisdom spoken gently
From your wrinkled lips.
But this dream can’t come true.
The world was not kind enough.
She has reclaimed you;
Taken you back to her chest.
Although all of us here
Have one another,
Home is alone when not with you.
LITTLE CANARIES
Spring is sprung;
But where are we?
Little canaries in a cage.
Praying the world’s poison
Won’t end our song.
Silence calls out danger,
But foolish birds don’t listen.
They fly on toxic wings,
Searching for a glint of silver freedom,
Losing life in pride.
If only they heard the silence;
They might understand.
When this poison passes,
And everything can be.
The freest of them all,
Shall be the little canary.
THE BUCKET
A battered-up bucket,
Someone left it outdoors.
She came and took it in;
Waiting for its owner to return.
But they did not come,
For what is a bucket to them
And all it can be?
To some a bucket,
Is just a bucket
That’s all the world sees.
But she leaned a little closer,
Look down and saw,
Sometimes a bucket
Is not what it seems.
When it secretly has four paws.
- For my dearest friend and her pup