Skip to content
Back to issue
From: Vol.07 N.02 – Writing in the Pause

Matisse in Ventnor Botanic Gardens

by Blake Everitt

Matisse stands with the weaving perianth

embroidered robin of the orange leaf

 

calycle wing of colour-canticles –

bring Venus-algae from dark places

 

to leave the waiting antiphons

combing the air with brushes of light

 

in dreams of bread and wine

haunted by the Date Palm’s perfect line

 

the willow-tulip bows its head

leaving its reflection there.

 

In fuchsia-embers of fugues we breathe.

 

Matisse stands,

an embroidered lemon-chalice.

 

Split grains

in mandarin light

the rosé-blossom tide

sings of spring anemones.

 

The lavender-cantor of hidden ambergris

casts a spell

 

as the hespera soil receives

its clementine glass of silence.

 

The lemon-clef dawn

in seraphs of pollen

 

the cherub-water ripple

of leaves, calm in the broken hourglass.

Published: October 2020
Blake Everitt

(b. 1989) has had poems published in Harbinger Asylum (Texas), Pensive: A Global Journal of Spirituality and the Arts (MA), Time of Singing (Pennsylvania), The Poetry VillageBlack Lives Matter UKQuarr Abbey Newsletter, Eye Flash PoetryThe RecusantDead BeatsFriendly Fire Collective (Philadelphia), C.H.S newsletter, the anthology Book of Christian Poems, and The Blue Morphosis by GreenFingers Recordings. He has poems forthcoming in Hawk & Whippoorwill (MA), and The Dawntreader.

An Australian and international
journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Plumwood Mountain Journal is created on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wangal people of the Eora Nation. We pay our respects to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, and to elders past, present and future. We also acknowledge all traditional custodians of the lands this journal reaches.

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED