My paper, your papyrus, hide,
that vellum inscribed with design
like leather, swine turned into wine;
now genesis of scribbled notes,
ex libris flyleaf annotate,
turned libraries as Dewey shelved.
For toddler, cotton, first play book
with pictures set to stimulate,
accompanied nursery rhymes.
whose echo words ring rhythmic chime.
But bolls, sung protest, cropping shared,
remember evil, weevil ways.
Wood printing blocks with ink applied
that means to reproduce in print,
a novel way to versify
through spawning of ideas shared,
potential, bole to canopy,
where breathing, breeding, globe renewed.
Here’s bronze, not third place in the race,
but busted statement in art’s place.
And copperplate, handwritten script,
with Verdigris, patina page,
a crusty sign of seventh age
when birthday candles, waxed now wane.
The potter, themself, human clay,
blood terracotta, pulse of earth
a poem rising from the wheel
then moulding shape of stanza build,
where common wheal of commonwealth,
for healing in community.
Those pollinators, beeing true,
where stamen, stigma brought to flower,
as bouquets shower bloom pheromones,
the fruit of labour in the field;
so celebrate both verse and prose,
academy, craft learning space.
Stephen Kingsnorth (Cambridge M.A., English & Religious Studies), retired to Wales, UK, from ministry in the Methodist Church due to Parkinson’s Disease, has had pieces curated and published by on-line poetry sites, printed journals and anthologies, including Academy of the Heart and Mind. He has, like so many, been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. His blog is at https://poetrykingsnorth.wordpress.com
Academy of the Heart And Mind 