Between Geology and Air
Question and answer after Ingrid Calame
How can we live
as if in a child’s painting:
earth sky
what is human between them
how can we live
between sky and earth
and not be compressed
the air in the alveoli
dense as if water
were flowing through us
Under our footsteps:
graffiti bones
the fossil layers
the mineral chains
attach us by lightsome metals
mined to make
our miracles
Earth pushes up
through our footsoles
air spins us
in its thinning spheres
time flies through us
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2019. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2019 was Roseanne Watt.
Editor’s note:
The first lines of these poems have been returning to me a lot lately, given the recent abundance of children’s rainbow paintings in the windows of our street. They make a fine companion to walk with on those pre-scheduled trips to the outside. I love the way this poem moves so deftly between lightness and density; it makes me want to grasp its meanings and resonances while I can, just in case they might fade or sink into that between-space of the white page they occupy.
Author’s note:
‘Between Geology and Air’ was written in response to an exhibition at the Fruitmarket Gallery by Ingrid Calame, an artist who has mapped the stained and cracked surfaces of pavements, car parks and concrete river banks. I’d had a powerful sense of a radical change of viewpoint which felt earth-orientated and which connected with my own feelings of walking layers of ground. Reading the poem now, I’m aware also of its focus on the lungs, breath which connects us to air as our feet connect us to earth.
