hope

descent

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I find myself
long ago,
remains of memory
scraps

What were you to me?
I ask him,
whom I never saw again.

And you, who meant so much to me
at the time
what were you? a vanishing?

I pick my way between the
haunting presences,
strangely comfortable and familiar
they don’t answer
neither did they

passive
controlling
hiding in their baggage
I poke at them a final time
what have you to say for yourself?
you?

silence, their ancient
language, patrolling my
invisibility, eliminating me
slowly
colluding,
familiarity chokes me

Who did this to you?
they don’t reply
I forgive them.

spring, dry ground

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a time has passed, days
we are long acquainted, and yet
separate

desolate, oh desert,
dry of tears and dust of weeping
endless plains
pains

heat of long despair
nothingness of prayer

colonising silence
I struggle to give voice
to my love’s song

deep and full within me
bubbling, turbulent
sweetness, warm and cool
a rain stored centuries
for you, hope

a stirring,
yet prisoned

break through,
ancient hope of truth,
beauty and delight,
break through

silence, hard and fierce
refusal,
my love’s song,
discouraged
deepens

a stirring
yet prisoned

distillation of sweet days
flowers, birds and beauty
resdolent with meaning,
moments bathed in wonder
atoms dancing, molecules
in song,
renewal’s promise
eternal
a sea, a stream, a storm
a purity of force

suddenly a rushing
unbidden, a fierceness,
filtering a crack, sudden, sudden

silence

a spring
ancient spring
I effervesce my wealth
raucous with abandon
liquid laughter
embraces stale silence
to life
baptises austerity
bathes pains
flows, flows, flows

Note: this poem is a work in progress and, interestingly to me, encapsulates in its in-progress state the very tensions intended to be present in the image of the poem that came to me this morning. I hope to come back to this image and poem at point with greater completeness. But for now the very representations of my own inner state of fullness and frustration evident in the not-quite-working feeling (at least to me) of the poem are wryly comforting.

hush

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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

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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.

wild the sea; the spray, gold

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storm, the wildness is coming
restless, I scent the rain
distant, but nearing
me, adrift, chop

currents crush me to
each other, press into my
skin, insistent
you are mine, Mine
I don’t belong to myself

forces pull on limbs
a vast rose crimson,
pulsing in the drench

clatter, rain advancing from
another shore, nearer still,
nearer, sound the drums of
torrents, clash against clash
whip, foam, soak, slap,
gasp, yet not a drowning
yet

monstrous pitterpat
hail, rain!
splatter
tumult a poor shelter,
lift me up, hide me
may I nestle in your ferocity

dip into the pinkish hue
silence a moment
down
returning,

surface
all is rose dawn
wild sea; rain-spray, gold

Note: a second poem in a series painted to Einaudi’s Divenire, played by myself after a long absence. This life size abstract water colour is painted in Rose Madder and Permanent Rose (Windsor and Newton Professional watercolour) splattered with Rembrandt Light Gold (Series III watercolour)