A Riddle
by Belle Ling

The sky keeps its mouth open.
Is there a loaf of something that I can offer?

It will be a long road⁠—
Old dreams are taking with them their old clouds.

The clouds⁠, in all sorts of ways, are old visitors to old views.
Heaviness licks me empty at every turn

of its interest. It never leaves me a crumb.
A cargo ship stirs up a puddle of self,

and shimmers it away. The sky eats its way
into silence. How far will oblivion

reach its oblivion? The far end,
gnawing on, as the ocean, like a voyager’s mind,

curves inward on folds of unnamed territory⁠⁠—
A tree by the shore radiant with its riddle.

 

Belle Ling received her PhD in Creative Writing at The University of Queensland, Australia. Her first poetry collection, A Seed and a Plant, was shortlisted for The HKU International Poetry Prize 2010. Her recent poetry manuscript, Rabbit-Light, was awarded Highly Commended in the 2018 Arts Queensland Thomas Shapcott Poetry Prize. Another manuscript of hers, Grass Flower Head, was shortlisted for the First Book Poetry Prize of Puncher and Wattmann in 2018. She is now teaching poetry at the University of Hong Kong.