Intertextual Petals
by Kay Medway
In a library, I realise I read and reread books
with titles like Wild Moon Rising,
especially, I think to myself,
to inspire a future poem of mine.
What I like about books like Wild Moon Rising
are Jenny Knight’s words:
“smattered with white pink petals so thin
she thought of the diaphanous dresses
of golden‑age film stars.”
Her line opens something in me.
Petals so thin she has seen
she would think of diaphanous dresses,
and from her petals
I begin my own imagining.
They make me picture moth wings
the colour of my bohemian skirt
in a summer evening reprieve,
walking past flats painted
in rust‑orange colours.
Before her words,
I still wrote of grass
as adorned to me as if in its garb,
as if pierced, punctuated, lightly punctured,
but only the way ear lobes sometimes are,
for glass‑like, tear‑like, beady‑sized gems
to shine from their grass‑stem openings,
and upon them,
as if I memorise her glassy‑eyed grass.
#Poem #Poetry #Handwritten
They make me picture moth wings
the colour of my bohemian skirt
in a summer evening reprieve,
walking past flats painted
in rust‑orange colours.