unfinished

It’s three o’clock in the afternoon, Central European Summer Time.

I have had a beautiful time in the studio today, the last day, but it feels unfinished.

My contemplations of two more large works, finishing triumphantly and emphatically, have not materialised. Maybe I should blame the hush?

A visitor came to see my work and she stayed longer than I expected. Longer in a good way, but it meant that my last hours are curtailed.

Perhaps I would not have painted triumphant works anyway.

There is always a pull in me to pour everything out to the last drop, to the death.

But what happens when it’s a moment for birth?

I am swooshing a bit in my own uncertainty, in my own interrupted cadence.

I think this is where I am meant to be.

So then I will start to clear up.

hush

Hush, a calm descends
Twilight blossoms its stillness
into night

I heard you breathing
Or did I dream
I heard you, sure
I heard you

pooled serenities
stars, songs, sea, storm
still a stillness
sovereignty

shh suspension
whisper not
a movement
lulls me, lulls

Peace amidst a glimmer
is it night?
it shines
certainty

Hush into this
vast birthfulness
cradled child
we are a oneness

Note: this is the last (I think) poem written from the Divenire series, painted to the backdrop of a performance (to myself!) of Einaudi’s work. The work for this poem is created in the same colours as before, but resulting in a work of profound peace, although there is a sense that in the depths, something new is already stirring.

sea singing

sea singing
carries from the depth
express in
jubilation
joyous in the day, the night

sea singing
shadows shift before me
open up in wonder, your heart,
your soul

rent the sky with longing
joy tears
a rift in pains
hope, hope anew

light, a faint initiation
rites a hymn of potency
a song a song a song

weave a thread of laughter
shadows mourn no more
luminous becoming
fulfil fulfil

sea singing
oh to catch this in a shell, to listen
evermore evermore

Note: this is the third poem (/song) in a series written to Divenire by Einaudi played by the poetess after a long absence. Title of an abstract watercolour in the same colours as before.

family portrait

They learned to drive
a tractor at the age of eight.
could deliver a lamb
(or a calf probably)
before they went to school.
When I arrived at their house
I dodged dogs barking: ‘oh
he’ll never hurt you’ at odds
with my fear.
They always cooked for twelve.
We could play in barns
full of hay and straw, taking care
not to be crushed to death
by falling bales.
Their cats lived outside,
their litter tray a pile of sand.
They ate
everything on their plates, even the fat.
Grew their own vegetables and fruits,
enumerated runner bean hauls,
raspberry baskets, plum punnet
and made loganberry jam, whatever that was.

I liked books.