Tuesday Poem - Scriptorium

SCRIPTORIUM

for Melissa Green

The knot in your old oak table pulses in synch with the lighthouse

storm warnings; Cato – draped like night around your neck – smells

of salt water, gold leaf, barnacles, the blunt-sharp rocks of proximity

and distance. He purrs in metronomic lighthouse time. The tip

of your fountain pen dips into black ink, shakes off the dark, ignites

a constellation of stars on the page. “I always write,” you say, “on yellow

paper; let it be as close to ochre as anyone can find, in honour of Lascaux’s hooves,
Nuri’s song lines, Altamira’s bison thundering; yellow paper, with dark blue 
veins in the page to stop me trembling; ancient tributaries mapping my way.”

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Away now from that ancient shipwreck of a house, that living catacomb – the unsafe

ark - words fly from your pen; those not already here, climb your apartment

steps, find their way in. Daily they come and never leave  - always with you

and life in mind. Like the torches that illuminated the first cave paintings

they peel back the shadows: inside the page, lanterns are waiting to be lit;

the vaulted ceilings of Medieval churches; fresco figures beckoning.

Lovers meet at dawn. In silence they greet each other’s deep, 

forbidden places. “I see,” you say. “I see,” I say. Your old oak table 

has the presence of an altar, the rounded belly and arched back 

of a much-loved cave. It’s a secret and a sacred stage. 

The tea in our cups not tea at all, but terracotta rain

gathered in a downpour, shot through with molten gold. 

  

CB - 14 May 2010/24 March 2011

To be dazzled, humbled, grounded, uplifted; inspired, encouraged and transported, 

visit Melissa's blog,  Vesper Sparrow's Nest. . .

For more Tuesday Poems, please click on the quill. 

This week's editor is NZ poet, Orchid with a poem by Canadian, Stephen Bett.

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I urge you to pop over to Rachel van Blankenship's blog where you can listen to her spellbinding reading of her poem - TWO BODIES.