Tuesday Poem: “Orison”
Orison
~ a Meditation on Katherine Mansfield, in the south of France
A bell calls on sleepy air
resonant
with late afternoon
sheep click & clack
over cobbles
the smell of fleece
hangs on the hour
an olive tree taps
against glass –
through twig and leaf
there is sea, bright
beneath a blaze of sky
the page on the desk
is blank, the pen
a burden to the hand –
she lifts it
draws in breath
…………..will again
until the final line
.
© Helen Lowe
~ published in Takahe 62, 2007
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Lovely Helen!
Thank you, Kathleen.
Lovely indeed… 🙂
Glad you enjoyed, Mary.
evocative, great sense of place and moment
Thanks, Keith. I put a lot of work into it, back then, so am glad it is resonating with readers.
I really liked the last lines, Helen – the sense of effort and will power after the benign landscape.
Thanks, Catherine!
I love that the pen is a burden – the act of lifting it up and beginning, or continuing, work. Very evocative with that choice of phrase, Helen.
This is also an answer to Catherine as well, but that was part of what I was wanting to achieve: the juxtaposition of the idyllic landscape—or our ‘dream’ of that landscape—with Katherine Mansfield’s illness and death, but also with her dedication and determination as a writer: when the ‘keeping going’ becomes more than just an easy phrase to trot out.