The Golden Mbira, Or How to Really Look
This place is changed
irrevocably, having taken on colour, brag & quirk
from a quicken of kerbs to a flurry of fields
something dirty made to shine
A gappy marriage of earth & air
We keep to boundaries
so much of our lives but I met a Celtic poet
who used 12 years to write
his Gaellic-Gallic-English mash-up of Sweeney.
Here, on a white wall, that same dedication, dare I say
obsession – as in words, as in art –
in the searching, the searching, in the whirring
of wire into gold, noting dates, lanes, time
This artist has been searching for two years
so far, offering a reminder to really look
Poets talk of looking aslant –
I consider how the artist Julia sees a dead cartridge
next to a bird
A musicality of form
even if birds no longer sing
let us believe
a woodpecker once made love to a buzzard
Poets might do well to write in art’s texture
that ability to recognise an individual
feather – to know the shaft of a hen pheasant
I long for specificity
as I long fervently for warplanes to stop
Such a failure in our inabilities
The gold keys bristle in empathy
try to take to the skies on a promise, a message, a promise
Their musicality cannot yet be played
though thumbs thrust to the mbira
We’re at the edge
each feather a lost shoe
in our wandering
Let us return to the oaky nest
where all birds are lovers
where an oak pretends to die
Others are not so fortunate
I’ve heard swallowing oak leaves
can extend a life –
a certain bitterness, guaranteed
What is it we might look for
in our long or short lives?
I stumble over dull metaphors
It’s good to see the humble
gleam from streets & hedges
in our rural/urban construct
How we wish for one but live in the other
I would like to be still
yet keep searching
Some things – such as love & compassion –
are hard to locate
Harder still, it seems, is peace
Katrina Naomi
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