Today’s poem was part of the Sheffield Poem-a-thon that took place yesterday. 50 poets read in succession from 10am to 6pm. We were all sponsored and in total managed to raise £12,000 for Assist Sheffield, a charity who help destitute refugees and asylum in Sheffield. It was an uplifting and successful event with standing room only. A big thank you to all my sponsors who raised £162 – yay! Also a big thank you to my husband who kindly filmed me 🙂

Where this is, that becomes

 

When faced with the woven richness

of each slipping second,

I am confounded by its

mystery, absurdity, improbability,

each a miraculously stitched detail

in varying shades of the same thread.

 

When  meditating

upon physiology of this being,

I can see how the headbone’s

connected to the backbone,

but asking how the heartbone’s

connected to the rainbow,

is a phenomenally fleeting fancy.

 

Where is the now of this very moment?

An ephemeral essence,

lingering upon the mind’s eye,

to be lost and witnessed,

more subtle than the breath of a bee,

more fragile than the heart of a butterfly

beating the odds – a winding down clock.

 

This is beyond a sense that is common,

and beyond the grasp of a humble hand;

it is the faint fragrance of a primal memory,

nurtured in the nursery,

played out by the quixotic,

protagonists in the playground of quotidian,

an egotistic boomerang.

 

So what is mine and mind?

where do I end and you begin?

To see the conundrum, the continuous koan

of life and death, of mind and breath;

do I want to be me or an Oak tree,

aren’t we the same? A branch of humanity,

seasoned with bittersweet reality.

 

© Where this is, that becomes  01.07.2013

by Alexandra Carr-Malcolm