Joanne PageDrawing
Light of the swan-like moon.
The blazing light of trees.
And the rarely-glimpsed bright face
behind the apparency of things.
“The Filled Pen”— P. K. Page
When all is said and done,
what does she remember?
Candied almonds in a dish
muted pink and butter yellow,
stockings blue as peacock plumes?
Like the dish with the spoon,
colour ran off with her at three
straight into the arms of words.
She chalks the gilded sun at noon and
light of the swan-like moon.
Did she ever tell him
that the thought of him turned her
to water? Oh yes he took her hand
(or did she give him hers),
and led her to the pond through
woodland as he would take
her over planet earth on boulevards,
across marble floors, under royal palms.
Bougainvillea, incandescent heat.
The blazing light of trees.
The writer when she cannot write
puts her pen to other use.
For three years she lives in her eyes,
drawing shadows by the jacaranda doors,
philodendron leaves, crayoned Holy Ghost,
church façade within a vast green space.
A world away, an antique period piece
eclipsed by years of literary fame,
landscapes once awarded pride of place
and the rarely-glimpsed bright face.
The drawing-board, the ink, the books
given away, the small room empty,
bereft of its chatelaine. Her island penned
in, pent up by exuberant tides and
lashings of clean hope as is the provenance
of new linen, lovers, children, birds and spring.
The water in the locks is level.
She has moved to the higher side.
Her art the prismed pleasure daylight brings
behind the apparency of things.
