The language is snowy
and lightly pummeling. You are meant
not to understand. It is not your language. It is
the transition zone’s signals, the gate’s signals.
Behind the night worries there is a Finnish ghost
over you like a bended tree. That is the thing
trying to pry away those bleak, other hands—
this is the great altercation making you
turn from side to side.
What is present is the field
– for you, it is in Finland –
that becomes magnetic
at the moment of its invocation.
Before then, it is passive. The gate
is between any two trees in Finland.
When you walk through it will activate.
Carmen Leigh Keates won the 2015 Whitmore Press manuscript prize, leading to the publication of her debut poetry collection, the cinema-themed Meteorites, which was then shortlisted for the 2017 QLD Literary Awards. Carmen is co-editor of Foam:e online poetry journal.