Uneasy, not a wedding
white, nor sterile scrub.
One tries to focus,
catching moonspace
imperfections, shallow shadows,
mere hint of tone or colour
gestating on the retina.
Miasma forms, and
dissipates across the iris.
Are those amoeba, dancing?
Down, and further down
Into the imagination
a cloud is born,
begins to grow,
becomes a starling
murmuration poised above
a windblown
winter marsh,
now reaching out,
now throbbing,
then collapsing like a circus tent,
playing with perception.
The eye craves a reference,
resolves a rural Bruegel
landscape, but why
the hovering Maigret pipe
– or do I mean Magritte?
A wash of tidal scum
not white at all
erases that
and gently strokes
a Seurat picnic
in its place
Those birds again.
In gloom the flocks settle for the night –
into that “Black Squareâ€
by Malevich.
© John Wright
Picture 13534357, digital image, with thanks to Tom Gillmor, image copyright Mary Evans
References: Art (1994), a play by Yasmina Reza, and White on White (1913) and Black Square (1915), paintings by Kasimir Malevich.
John Wright is thrice retired – firstly from being a pilot, secondly from a career in advertising, and most recently, as a lecturer in marketing and business at international universities. Apart from a twenty-five year interlude, he has been writing poetry since his teens, and suddenly rediscovering his muse about ten years ago, he says he now just can’t stop, and recently gained an MA in Creative Writing (Poetry) at The University of Kent, Canterbury. From choice, he writes about the sea (he keeps a small yacht in The Solent), landscape (he flies microlight aircraft and gliders over Sussex), the fragility of human relationships (his third, and “final†wife has also been three times married), and such political issues that have him raging over his breakfast newspaper. From October to June he lives on the edge of Eastbourne, in sight of the South Downs, and – on tiptoe – the sea, and in summer he decamps to his ‘Shed’ in southern France. He believes he may still have four grown-up children, and four grandchildren, but you know how it is, they never phone, rarely call back, and have always already made other arrangements for Christmas.