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Flight
We fed popcorn to flocking pigeons Their wings clapped the air above our heads You were not In your red coats And I was not in mine But your eyes were all so dark And your smiles so young And the birds’ iridescent feathers Framed your faces Against the water colour sky My daughters Growing up, growing away Free-wheeling into distant lives We ran together Across the road, shielding our eyes From the pigeon that had been knocked down Lifeless wings lifting and falling with the passing cars Mimicking flight © Bridget Pitt 28/03/2010 |
Catching green There was a green poem On the sliding curve of an autumn evening I think I glimpsed it Lodged in the tines of my fork Or curled beneath a glistening sliver of cucumber Or nestled between my dog’s paws And the lazy laughter of my girls Or perhaps in the eddying spaces Circling the high-diving swallows As they gathered the last dust of summer To take it across the seas Well, I almost caught it But then yielded to seeing and not watching Not recording Not succumbing To the numbing of the framed moment But letting time slip through my fingers Without fear or grief at its passing Such was the greenness of the poem That I glimpsed © Bridget Pitt |
A day in the country with Judith Mason
Slow bubbles in a river Line our passage to the gallery To Judith Mason’s marks on canvas, and so many skulls and Sad testimonies on those unforgiving wooden pallets Human horror bracketed By late afternoon dust settling through old trees And that certain brittle restlessness That comes, sometimes, to people who know each other too well When they gather in hot places To share dolmades and other cling-wrapped offerings And contemplate an artist’s effigies of death My daughter and her friend Orbit our world in a sealed capsule Send, occasionally, a small signal from space The languid wave of a hand, (Oh the poignancy of young girl hands And their languor... what is it that drags them down Into such sultry sleepiness?) A vague smile to mark their tolerance of our ineptitude. Mason’s skulls roll off them Like pebbles in a stream And I am grateful for their immunity And the quietness of the day © Bridget Pitt |