Syzygy (Scrabble with Ivy)
by Felicity Plunkett
Edge, swerve, disturb, you’re all
verb: pressed to you, wilfully
irresistibly, like ivy, sighingly, I climb like
an adverb unattached, insouciant, this high
wire, thighs and strive, brine and hive, like
glide and tine: riskily, out along the wire
wildly shuffling the letters I have to find
my lines, a sign: my evergreen, my ground-
creeping, my hedera rhombea, my
araliaceae, my nouns, my verbs, my rising
to scale these outcrops, my um-
bel, my unlobed adult leaves, my
fertile flowering stems, my
marginal list of small words to hold
the edges of other words, fold
into yours like buds or lovers, and my
you are fine, high-scoring, blithe, you
spell out my secret names (bind-
wood, lovestone), syllables
no one uses except to access this
bingo, palmately, this lucky hand, this
random allocation, all squiffy squeeze, as I sigh
against artery and inferior rib in the crush
of these tiles and us, defying windfall damage, my
greens deepen, words like birds arrive
to disperse seeds like leaves, until my –
like a happy hand of letters, like
za or qi – and quixotry – this syzygy.
Felicity Plunkett’s is the author of Vanishing Point (UQP, 2009), Seastrands (Vagabond, 2011) and the editor of Thirty Australian Poets (UQP, 2011). Her new collection is forthcoming with Pitt St Poetry. She is an Australian poet, critic and editor, and Poetry Editor with University of Queensland Press.