Anna Reckin
IN PLAIN SIGHT
pattern’s call, recall
rung
fret
strut
stripe
across & thru & beyond
a jug of flowers
cartwheels of cow-parsley, ferny foliage, teasel
head & fine grasses poised over the edge
of a table that gleams as it nears the window:
its pale-shadowy trees
and the little chair in the corner, and the
unfinished painting on the opposite wall,
flowers a white mass on a blue background –
window- and door-frame
bead, skirtings and floor-boards
diagonal of
shawl’s fringe
[ the bars at the end of the bed ]
and the subtle syntax of shadows: light, dark, lighter still
hard and soft edges
You think you’re looking –
SWEET COOL
zinc buckets on a North Sydney street, Iceland poppies
– sub-arctic dazzles, the plantsman says; for scent
Champagne Bubbles or Meadow Pastels Mixed
sillage of cools about a round table in a bare (rental) room
‘usually will not survive hot, humid summers’
winter heliotrope, Petasites fragrans, November this year – early
almond and vanilla from amongst the flat-hat leaves
has outlasted the destruction of the hawthorn hedge
piercing aromatic
unexpected again
DUNGENESS
I
no fences,
not The Last of England: his doubtful face, her fearful one, the child’s fingers glimpsed
in the curl of the shawl
nothing to stop anyone walking in, any time
The coast road becomes The Parade, but the only promenade is over the sands,
through wavering channels, to the sea
creaking timbers, spray, the cries of gulls
– fade-in, fade-out, vignetted –
II
rose, and gorse,
stones, and water, and light
III
the danger signs on the map are stamped all the way out to sea
not
[the friendly lights]
an edge This
is the center of some
circle
back of London
tangent
lean-to, makeshift,
Britannia FREE HOUSE
hunkered down amid the shingle
IV
To the south, old sea-cliffs, now inland, greened. During the war, the sea-walls were
breached, the levels reflooded; against invasion
Copyright © Anna Reckin 2016
Anna Reckin lives and works in Norwich. Her first collection, Three Reds, was published by Shearsman in 2011, and she has recently finished her second. See annareckin.com
‘In plain sight’ is based partly on Eric Ravilious’s watercolour Ironbridge Interior (1941).
‘In plain sight’ is based partly on Eric Ravilious’s watercolour Ironbridge Interior (1941).