from BARDO

The stars are in our belly; the Milky Way our umbilicus.

Is it a consolation that the stuff of which we’re made

is star-stuff too?


– That wherever you go you can never fully disappear –

dispersal only: carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen.


Tree, rain, coal, glow-worm, horse, gnat, rock.


Roselle Angwin

Saturday 11 October 2014

another q&a poem: Speaking and answering with occasionally looking up

My dear friend Jo, one-time member of my Two Rivers poetry group, reminded me that a poem she had published in our anthology Confluence a few years ago was an uncanny fit for my qs & as poem-request. (It was under her former name, Jo Bellchambers.)

I love Jo's work – her voice is truly unique. I'm delighted to post that poem here:

Speaking and answering with occasionally looking up
What did you find?

Two vowels in the centre of a word
The way the spine curves, one to another
And in a wood, sunlight in places
An arrangement of moss on stones
Air.
What did you give him?
Fish scales
Benediction
A colour inherent in silence.
What did you see?
Words whispered from a mouth
Thin as moths' wings.
What did you hear?
The metre of a rhyme
Salt moving in an ocean
A gesture on a face change.
What did you accept?
A small bird's wings behind glass
Lamplight filling a street
Another tongue entirely.
What did you lose?
A life full of regret
The deceit of skin
Afterwards when we looked out
A light snow had fallen.
What was said?
It is enough
Rien.



© Jo Cornwell
 






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