Lattimo
Lattimo: milk twist, mist hint.
Venetians pearled minerals –
lead, lime, tin lime – thicked
clear glass to quasi-Chinese
porcelain for simple painting,
birds & flowers. Fingers twirl
composite stems whose colour
twist rock-candies, snake-ladders
precious yellow, less-rare green,
birdclaw red, while blue, longed-for,
yearns like a certainty
expressed by convolution
but inwardly a wynd of truth.
Contemplate, for a moment
(l’attimo), how just as when
incalmo joins bubbles blown
separately – two, while hot,
made one – each listed item
here desires liquid, lips;
lights prunted below looped eyes.
TIC TAC TOE
Dún Laoghaire pier: two men, as dark as I am, each playing an accordion, next to each other, brotherly, calling hello to the dogs that, preferring squeezebox conversation to the pursuit of seagulls, bark back.
XXX
XXX
XXX
The benches are painted sky blue, the sky manifestly pearl-grey, the lichens as orange as lifebuoys, the lifebuoys bobbing like blood oranges, the locks do not weep nor bleed rust, the rust looks as natural as metal, if James Joyce’s snot was as green as this harbour he must have been snorting powdered kelp and copper, the oxygen makes me asleep, the phone calls out like a clock, and when I arrive inside the Lexicon the studio’s shut and the poets beginning.
OOO
OOO
OOO
The question at home is how many lambs this early; which is not my home, nor my question; and like an unlikely birth I poodle along on welcome, uncertain feet.
XOX
OXO
OOX
Photograph © Molly Dilworth
