Between rice bowls and candlelight
stretch moments
of perfect contentment.
Laughter waltzes with garlic prawns,
jives with olives,
pirouettes with wine.
Among tall rococo willow
shadows
bats flit a bold fandango.
Atom by atom past
suffering melts
in relentless gentleness.
Gravid time. Still air. A drop
hanging
from a leaf. A wish unspoken.
Goldfinch at their morning tasks
Sing willow songs
Of sunlit miracles.
Three cabbage whites, two dragonflies,
one thrush
distinguishing silences.
A baby toad, her thumbnail size,
its thumb
a perfect pinpoint marvel.
Moorchicks sprint along new
lily pads
playing at flight with stumpy wings.
And here’s a moorcock mate, green
claws spread
poised, slow to the ground. Balletic.
Light as a hop, soft as a
tune hummed
through a smile, warm as new laid eggs.
Such lightness, buoyancy, this
loosely
smiling warmth: could she be happy?
© Rosie Johnston
Picture 10505257, woodblock print, ink on paper, attributed to Ohara Koson, image copyright Mary Evans / Ashmolean Museum
Rosie Johnston’s three poetry books, published by Lapwing Publications in Belfast, are Sweet Seventeens (2010), Orion (2012) and Bittersweet Seventeens (2014). Her poems have appeared or featured in Ink, Sweat & Tears, Hedgerow, London Grip, Culture NI, FourxFour and The Honest Ulsterman. She was commissioned to take part in Live Canon’s 154 Project (2016) celebrating Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary and has been poet in residence for the Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust since 2014. She also reviews poetry for London Grip. www.rosiejohnstonwrites.com @RosieJpoet