‘I’m Bursting to Tell’: Riddles for Conception Bay
1
I’m the conduit of neighbourliness. At my best I’m hot-tempered. Alone I grow cold.
In my belly I hold what will be a stream soon.
2
I am a gape, an astonishment with a little beard.
In my belly they have found old rings, tin cans, a broken oar. My children once were legion, crammed the waters.
3
I, sir, am straight as a die, and a firm believer in hanging. Swinging forms mean the world’s kept in good order. But I’m at the mercy of weather— mauzy days I’m abandoned; windy ones, much burdened.
4
I am a small paradox: I am a world in myself; I am just a beginning. I’m not the mammal’s way, but I’m chockful of meat.
5
I’ve got more pleats than a girl’s skirt— and I’m the first to jump up for a dance. I fancy the swoop, the razzamatazz. Draw me out at a party and I’m a real old smoothie. Ah I’m on to the ins and outs of a tune. But I’m a touchy sort: rough handling makes me squawk.
6
I’m a drifter, shape-shifter; I’m prone to upheaval. Now I’m castle, now cathedral. Although you note my diminishing there’s more to me than meets the eye.
7
I’m easily needled— up to a point, no further. Then I’m the impervious, the staunch little hard hat. There’s blood on my mind, but I don’t give the finger.
8
I am the blind one, the old brown one, knobbed and warty. In my dusty coat, the earth’s eyes. In my cream innards I hold a story of water. Sometimes a faint dark at my heart.
9 Many-armed, dot-eyed, ricochet-minded,
I am the stuff of bad dreams. Like a jilted lover I spurt ink in anger. 10
I am the sea’s green mandala. Some say I’m the spawn of whores. Gulls drop me from the sky, smash my hedgehog armour to spill my secrets on stone.
11
Hubbub’s my name; corrugation’s my game. A burly trailblazer, I blunder along. Where I go, brokenness, a barren new way.
12
I can’t make my mind up: I’m a child of the land—or am I a child of the sea? A creature of margins, I’ve an eye for a trinket, some nice bric-a-brac. I soothe the washed-up.
13
A barbed question,
I am my own answer. (Now taboo.) The sun glints off me. I’m designed to rip flesh, but some think me a healer.
14
I run in circles on an addlebrain’s back. Spring sees me cut off from home. I sprawl in the meadow, sun-struck. A knotty proposition. Much work thereafter to set me in order.
15
Quite lowly am I— and yet you bend to me. Sun and rain made me a blue globe with a dark little crown. 16
Four workers, a boss: five spinning, stealing the breath of the spinning one.
17 Bird-name,
I gleam in high places. On stone you’ll kneel, pluck out my small red eye.
18
I hug the shore, but I go with the flow. I know my future is ash. Ripped from my moorings, I pay upheaval with blessing: I fatten your fields.
19
I love your hands; let me come closer.
But you’re a fickle one. A flower unleashed a rumour, linked me with foxes. Now you sneer at my velvety kiss, mutter fears of an iron grip.
20
A collapsible I—
I’m your very own tunneller, your private worm in the head. I’ve got your number. An absence-license, I wheedle you into air— into the rushing elsewhere.
21
Some of us travel white fields, are entangled in the affairs of men. We can, it’s said, shed our skins, shuffle off the sea’s spell. With a flip and a wriggle we can vanish from view.
22
The one-eyed fish, the wiry spelunker.
The horse that rides you never know when. (A Trojan horse, me, with my cargo of swimmers.) They build statues to me, towers, stacks—such tall prayers to me.
23
My cousins are grander, but I’m free and easy. I float on water, on my own rubber raft. I flaunt my sleek self, a concave little sun.
24
Birds, boats, crops— in time I’ve swallowed all. I’ve patted your baby’s face, played hide-and-seek in your lilacs.
25
In wry lines I muster dreams, lies, enigmas. Though some scorn me as cipher, I’m full of grand notions. I’m bursting to tell— but I’m mute till you come to me.