Breathing Time

Breathing Time

Tempo para Respirar - an installation by Maria Nepomuceno at the Sunley Gallery, Turner Contemporary, Margate

My feet lie like two blue fish on a coil of blue rope,

as if some fisherman’s dragged them from the turbid

sea outside. I think of standing in the blue volcano,

letting myself  be swept  away in the lava of blue beads.

Instead, I sit and breathe, let part of me float skyward

to rest in the empty chair swaying somewhere towards

heaven.  We will all leave empty chairs on earth.  A plant

made of rope climbs the wall of my memories. 

The Mexican hats are not mine, although I remember

someone  wearing one once. Perhaps I’ll lie in the red hammock,

take my first breaths again in the embrace of its stripey vulva,

standing on its emphatic  red elephant’s foot.  Yes,

I’ll spend time breathing there, just as I’m breathing

here now, writing this,  then I’ll leave, everything,

never having stood, in the blue volcano, what remains

of my breath will hang somewhere near an empty chair.

Questions for the heart

Where do you live

that you beat your wings against bars that surround you
resist tethers that tie you? 

Where would you fly
if the window were open to sheets of blue and scatters of stars
the door key just there in the lock?

What’s running through you
so quickly you don’t want to keep it,
send it packing with such beating of drums?

 

How would it be to hold it,
cherish it, nourish it,
let it stay as a guest in your four sweet rooms?

Heart, what do you love?
Really love?

Morning


I got up too late for Venus
but last night’s sky made me gasp

as the dog and I made our midnight

circuit of the Crescent under the half moon -

 

dew soaked my shoes this morning

on the high hill overlooking Canterbury,

the cathedral misty in the deep bowl

of the surrounding Downs,

 

a robin singing insistently,

a distant sounds of bells.