BELOVED. PENNY SHARMAN. TEXTILE & ACRYLIC

*****

A SUITCASE OF STARS

Venus shines crisp in heaven against the black
as other stars spin like Catherine’s on a nail,
and I kiss the silence as still points crack.

Gods tell tales and dreaming archers fall back
as lips are waiting, red, red, your simple smile is pale.
Venus shines crisp in heaven against the black.

You were my opus, my longing lane, my love kick.
Now I kneel and howl, now I kneel and wail
and I kiss the silence as still points crack.

Ears are deaf to my dot-dot, dash-whack,
my words and letters take off to air, crash and fail.
Venus shines crisp in heaven against the black.

My scuffed heart hunts, scrapes along a track
where hibernation softens the blood to no avail,
and I kiss the silence as still points crack.

Your eyes beam for another as I coil at the lack.
Silver sparks orbit my heart like falling shale.
Venus shines crisp in heaven against the black
and I kiss the silence as still points crack.

 *****

GOLD RUSH. PENNY SHARMAN. ACRYLIC & GOLD LEAF

 *****

MOTH IN A WHITE ROOM

I have taken to being moth
murmuring my wings by night.
My sculpted feet pose, are twigs
like stamens they pray.
I tip toe into rooted secrets
buried under a skin of stone
I hide from you.
Tongues lick orange blossoms and
feelers rise like aerials to the divine.
In a flicker they echo
in a flicker I’m gone.

I have taken to being bird,
night after night I star gaze,
sit motionless in my nest.
I remember maps in the sky fields
fireworks for the brain that hone my feathers.
I navigate a sea of blackness
and hold Polaris steady.
Earth wobbles on its axis
like a gyroscope in slow motion
and some birds are born
knowing the stars.

I have taken to being star
as dust arrives from nowhere.
Before life constellations whispered
to a lost nebula.
Only once I caught your smile
your soft warm lips and a comfort of arms.
In another life pyramid builders conjured
shafts aligned to Isis
a flight for all after lives.
Finally my eyes are heavy as
dust vanishes again and again.

*****

WAVE OF LOVE. PENNY SHARMAN. ACRYLIC & TEXTILE

*****

THE TURRET

is the height of tiny things,
specimens of wood-bark curls and boxes,
pill boxes that hold a universe of flying moths
and dragonflies, seed pods
and one giant’s fallen fig leaf.

One single blue-tit’s feather
resting under a glass cloche
is an old man’s view of heaven,
a temper on the lake of resistance.

after Ruskin

*****

Penny Sharman is The High Window‘s Resident Artist for 2020. Her pamphlet Fair Ground (Yaffle Press) and her collection Swim With Me In Deep Water (Cerasus) are available from her website: pennysharman.co.uk