Issue 35: Angela Gardner

Object Permanence

        I

a mountain enters the house, it comes in through the windows

it hunches in the looking glass. it refuses to fit the concept

of landscape: the panes and frames, its mirrors and folds.

the mountain struggles to shape the view into something interior.

the mood of the weather changes. I decline to climb the wind. 

the mountain that is no longer a mountain crumples in a map

where topography settles, it fills only to the edges of the mirror.

I crane to see what is lost in relation to the fulcrum of the day

this turns on a thought: only a shadow of a mountain. I look at it

from many angles, it radiates from my single point perspective

as less than, more than stone, less than, more than air, less than,

more than water. there are gaps, my inability to provide description

yet every time I move my head there is more to see: a panorama

of multiples, its non-existent boundaries, its constant vanishing.

        II

of multiples, its non-existent boundaries, its constant vanishing

we are all too aware. the sea happens. the sea swallows the line

behind a mountain, it is continuous until it isn’t. what happens?

pierce the water, dousing the image of itself, a river unravels.

the sky wants to get into the river, it reaches down, its clouds

follow the line of the river faithfully, from headwater to floodplain.

it has the appearance of flow, it is a rope or a chain, it is a channel

occupied by reflection and refraction. it changes direction, it grazes

and glances, it leaves a ghost on the surface. the river is not how

we get into a river. it is light, it is incidence. on the river there is

no depth to the sky, this way the sky gets in and it continues

on its way. a line reappears flashy: a river behind a mountain.

sky is moving through great fields, it opens all the way to the sea

it etches wider and deeper. a continuous line, a bright cascade.

        III

it etches wider and deeper. a continuous line, a bright cascade

: the two slits the stream will or will not go through, shifting

as light enters and fills. was it interior or exterior? who’s to say

what it is armatures the geared wheelwork of the day? nothing

is to scale. astronomical model trundling our relative positions

our tin and brass. the house considers itself in relation to the sun

the meadows and cliffs, paths and streams perform their carousel

spinning around the house as the sun demands. sun enters each

of us: retinue and baggage in its progress, the rotating circular

platform, the cattle and sheep in their fields, crank-geared, moving.

the sun circles the house, along the mountains. winter sun

bouncing at the horizon one step ahead of a weak voice singing

anyone who had a heart, discarding its chain, its karaoke cursor.

the deep-set brighter stars, the many pointed as they hammer.

        IV

the deep-set brighter stars, the many pointed as they hammer

through rock to hidden chambers or molten flasks of heat.

my bones jumping in my hands, tree branches in moonlight.

I collapse in the field, clean out of my body, bewildered

but seduced, dissolving into the surrounds. uncertainty

mote and tender, slows our eccentric machines. it undercuts

splayed-over-grass arguments for solidity, for decayed light

over the sodden bluebells. a stream overflows the house

it inundates, it moves like consciousness in continuous motion.

over the floors and walls, exploring, filling, axial and elliptical.

wheeling overhead, finding entry. light on the mountain changes

: steep vantage cliffed into sky. emotion floods me. in my head

I am light on my feet, holding the house, not seeing the house.

I return to the sea. I have walked in the kingdom wave-like. 

        V

I return to the sea. I have walked in the kingdom wave-like

headlong into make and remake, my reflection in a rush

among its gardens. light refracting through strands of kelp.

I close my eyes to bright motes of phosphorescence

detached from the attention required to flutter at the surface.

trajectories brocade the dark ocean. in the unfinished body

of water a periscope ascends out of my mind, upwelling

from turbulence. it is difficult to see what isn’t there. the mountain

alone rising out of the sea-bed, waking its deep-sea vents

: up up into depths where I will forget to breathe. its constant

addition and subtraction, the spill and surge that writes

an ocean. instability under its shoals and currents. not all

systems that are not stable are unstable. a lifted thing, charged.

as the surface breaks, then the roof of heaven. I shove it back.

        VI

the surface breaks, then the roof of heaven. I shove it back.

up here you see distance, mountains submersed. head in the clouds

foot forward running the sky-blue onward sharp with detail.

I’m trembling, fading in cool bucketfuls where energy quickens.

electrons, forming and collapsing: a world in a process of its own

making. multiple points connect. the cloud shoulders its way in.

into the house it comes. in and out through windows and doors.

it disregards, it shrouds, so that you cannot see the mirror. whole

mountains disappear into this device. between this and another

opening a whole ice-shattered mountain, monumental, lithic and

hungry, is lost. the mountain we don’t see is a platform scaffolded

in mist. is this in the mind or in the world? sometimes the mountain

is there, sometimes not, sometimes we see it, sometimes not,

and don’t talk to me about reversing the mirror of the image.

        VII

and don’t talk to me about reversing the mirror of the image

between me and the stranger. I turn the mountain over

I hold the mountain up in my mind. beneath it is a darkness

a shadow compressing until it is completely hidden. light slows

my hands. in the widescreen sweep of darkness with its stars

sticky underfoot I enter the walled citadel on a different road

reaching back in a dream. I see its shape and am terrified. it is night

it is weakness, it is love we cannot return from. the river

rising, inscribes its line. a cloud floats above it casts its own

shadow. it follows until rain becomes heavy enough to fall

from the sky. it corresponds in all respects to reality. I shelter

closely, secretly under, between the rays of light and the surface

though nothing means just one thing: not sleep nor a mirror
: not a high note in the wind nor blinded falter in the night-field.

        VIII

: not a high note in the wind nor blinded falter in the night-field.

I have made a scale-model of the world out of the sky of skylarks

a honeybee laden with pollen as it drifts toward the eye then

adjusts its course and floats past. over the horizon, unseen, behind

its apparent line, the house and mountain no longer exist. instead

clouds change how light shines on the buttercups in a borderland

that stretches and expands, that reshapes the meadow in a familiar

sensation of falling. the geometric horizon is a nearness of stalks

it is a restlessness of petals, the giddy young queens not yet set

to their task. stay all the bells so they cannot ring, everything sent

into air, neither static nor stable but lifted and altered in the sleep

-wake blur where ladies smock and three-cornered garlic blow.

an idea possesses the mind, the wind tracing its random signal

turned away, isolated and caught in a moment between moments.

                                                           IX

turned away, isolated and caught in a moment between moments

while turning and revolving, the heavens rest. the sun remains

unmoved. return is seaward, conformed to an edge. in the meadow

the more distant part of the sea in view, the rectangle of it

failing to read, by its angle, the displacement of the mountain.

the spine of it extends, bodies its way out of the earth until water

gushes through an arched passageway with the energy of weather

broken loose. I step into the river to drink. rain blocks the mountain

the river circles with its double-drift of cloud-following-water. it is

horizon, walled in glass, roofed in sky, there at all beginnings.

reality, what is that? waves break over the mountain in currents

and tides of air, the limits of the land observable in close-up.

a restless nearness so distance disappears to mere shadow-play

elusive within its boundaries I measure each distance by eye.

                                                           X

elusive within its boundaries I measure each distance by eye.

who said it is a window? the mountain hides from the house;

it plays tag. it shrugs its head deep under a black velvet cloth

(a mechanism to control how the light will fall). the mountain

enters the house through a dark chamber, it cannot find the door.

the light falls but only just. the mountain steps from this dusk

to become multiple, blurry, and on its head. just as in another

space and time, for visual symmetry, the mountain will meet

the water perfectly as image. the continued existence of what left

and what has returns remains unconnected to human motives.

the beginning tells the whole, or not quite: how the bee enters

the flower over its flanks, the mountain, the river and the ocean

fit together. the shadow or the object, the image or its reverse

there is correspondence, limits, an object recorded in multiple.

                                                           XI

there is correspondence, limits, an object recorded in multiple.

we ask because we inhabit the body, a roof-fallen cave with its light

pouring in from the next unreachable floor. and there are forces

acting upon us (all that is out there wants in). everything substitutes

for something else, useless to pretend otherwise. isn’t this metaphor?

the unconscious restless, commuting back and forth between another

unknown and what can be named. the mountain is doubled and in

doubling, lossless. imagine a well-lit room, no light lost by this flawed

reflection, focus on the subterranean river how it tumbles over rocks

water colourless unless it moves. light comes from an opening, creates

a pathway we can follow as the mountain opens itself to the outside

and the river sprawls over the threshold into indigo-blue mineral

brilliance. it has escaped disordered to overhang the mountain

where hollowed out, folded outcrops lost to gradient hold the sun.

                                                           XII

where hollowed out, folded outcrops lost to gradient hold the sun

as it carries from place to place. the river quickens, finds

its path away from the heights, falling over itself in its hurry.

the mountain recedes, becomes backdrop, becomes painted scene

becomes blue distant vanishing point. the river is part of a system

: rhythm and pace, plumbing and electricity. it dissipates

and discards, it adds and subtracts, erodes and spills. the water

slow and lossy through wetlands where birds rise from surface

into massy air in a white feathered cloud, so we will ask which

came first the terror or the wildly beating heart? the brightness is startling

a reflection on the edge of a window, a gap in the world less than

perfectly transparent. what does the river care about threshold

or a barrier photons cannot pierce? it has other boundaries to cross

the river must collapse into the ocean and cool moist air above.

                                                           XIII

the river must collapse into the ocean and cool moist air above

but it traverses first the meadow. a lit space of fish and lace-wings

projecting random rainfall onto summer. the fish and insects

are contained, they understand flow, they fly through, then against

transparency. bank is a shallow wall, valley ditto. river is unfixed

a shape of between and depth. amphibious bladderwort, floating

burr-reed, fringed lilies to cross-reference with stickleback and eel

lamprey and toad. the mountain is distant memory as river, being

a course of small collective events, gains momentum. meadow

is bystander to the river’s ambiguity. how wide, how long? water

presses down on its bed, shifts sediment along. it is balancing

the skies even as it reaches forward. the river remains agile

in the shallows, animals webbed and goggled, as the river leaves

its mouth. here the language of gift is translated, met with brine

is met with infinity or as near to infinity as can ever be met.

                                                           XIV

is met with infinity or as near to infinity as can ever be met

stars blooming in the tumult, where are my hands? incomplete

stepping into a meadow under the stars unable to see my self.

to dark night sky, it’s a spherical hum made visible from silence.

abandon the body and what is left of encounter? how to get

meaning starts and stops, arrives loosely, sometimes delayed

as relay stations cable their unlimited duration and content.

above valleys, sea caves arch where the tides rush in. in tracts

uncontrolled, electrical impulses rain down. folded into hills

everything remains active, disorienting, disruptive. at the brink

it is never just a question of overwhelming scale water mapped

to up-side-down. how can we talk about things?  look away. ideas

persist as residue, tilted beneath clouds’ inaccurate shining edges

a mountain enters the house, it comes in through the windows.

                                                           XV

a mountain enters the house, it comes in through the windows

of multiples, its non-existent boundaries, its constant vanishing.

it etches wider and deeper, a continuous line, a bright cascade

the deep-set brighter stars, the many pointed as they hammer.

I return to the sea. I have walked in the kingdom wave-like

as the surface breaks, then the roof of heaven. I shove it back

and don’t talk to me about reversing the mirror of the image

: not a high note in the wind or blinded falter in the night-field.

turned away, isolated and caught in a moment between moments

elusive within its boundaries I measure each distance by eye.

there is correspondence, limits, an object recorded in multiple.

hollowed out, folded outcrops lost to gradient, hold the sun

the river must collapse into. the ocean and cool moist air above

is met with infinity or as near to infinity as can ever be met.

Angela Gardner is a Welsh Australian writer and visual artist. Her most recent poetry, a verse novel The Sorry Tale of the Mignonette, Shearsman, was shortlisted for 2022 Wales Book of the Year, and a UK National Poetry Day recommendation. She has six poetry collections including Some Sketchy Notes on Matter (Recent Work Press, 2020), shortlisted for the Dorothy Hewett Award, and the Thomas Shapcott Prize winning Parts of Speech (UQP, 2007).  Poems are published in The Yale Review, West Branch, Image (USA); Poetry Salzburg Review (Austria); SoftBlow (Singapore); Blackbox Manifold, The Long Poem (UK); Southerly and Cordite (Australia). Slippage, shortlisted for the Helen Anne Bell Poetry Bequest Award 2023, will be published by Recent Work Press, Canberra, Australia in 2026. The Closed Spaces, from which this poem is taken, is due out from Shearsman Books, UK, in the second quarter of 2026.

Copyright © 2026 by Angela Gardner, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.