I am sailing in a sea
beyond horizons
a pastel wash
the edges blurred
and like a child
I want to trail my fingers
and rub the colours
til they smudge
and tear
until the sea and me
drain down
down
through the paper hole
although I could weigh anchor
for a while
then take the wind
and skim
across the ocean
on a carven wave
(c) Helen McKinlay

Thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the amazing image above. The artist is Frenchman Odilon Redon.
This poem belongs to my ‘mystical period’ 🙂 I wrote it about a decade ago. I was partly thinking of those drawings one does as a child…and then there is the rub and smudge thing…and the big hole which would be a consequence and so of course the boat would fall down it or get rubbed out…but I seem to have found another way out which I rather like.
The hub page is edited by Cathy Bateson this week with a wonderfully vital poem by Australian poet Samuel Wagan Watson. Visit it here now.