Poetry
Noah's Raft, An Aerial View
Inspired by ‘The Seating Plan’ (Mixed Media) by Pip Woolf
Newport Gallery February 2006.
Two-by-two the unruly crew go forth to mix and mingle
ignoring all requests to sit symmetrically and single.
He tries high-rising intonation, seating plan in hand — says
he’d feel safer if they’d settle down?
They sympathise, but stand.
Plan A is folded by day three
into a cracking aeroplane that hits the dove,
and then the sea.
Plan B.
For thirty-seven days and nights
unlikely social circles carve
in soft, warm, sawdust wrinkles, and re-carve.
Side-winding slides, hard hooves, wide-angled grooves
of dodgy tree trunk sea legs kindly skidding
round the humps of hidden heads.
Stir-crazy scribbling tails, and dips
where flustered, flapping wingtips lap the ground.
All Earth is drowned except for this blessed place
Where playful features crease upon a well-worn face.
Poetry also appears through my wider work, woven into memoir, thought experiments, observation and theology.
Some have arrived here on the Poetry page by following the signpost trail through the website.
Poetry is an interesting place to pause.
But what about the other strands of thinking that need to be unravelled?
