Carillon Magazine

Poetry from the magazine

Issue 13

 

Portrait

John Cartmel-Crossley (Alnwick)

 

How quickly I can change your mood.

Creating magic with my modest means.

A brush stroke here, another there,

Another skipping on the canvas

To bring your life perpetual pause,

Time-stopped,

Dancing in the light.

 

I know I must find familiarity

With the structure of your face,

Noting relationships and make a case

For seeking truth beneath the lines,

Searching with eye and brush to

Leave you,

Dancing in the light.

 

I catch the last seconds of a smile,

And labour to connect the dots.

I feel your pulse

Beneath the ochre-laden bristles

As they glide and coax

Your image into life, to leave you, always

     Dancing in the light.

 

Variation on Pieces of Silver

Patrick Walsh (Cork)

 

Presumably oblivious

To their great potential

In breaded-fish and chips

Or drunkman’s plow-lunch,

They flash their silvery bellies

At the wide sunlit mouth

Of quays at Parnell Bridge,

Tempting Sunday passers-by

To pause for a moment

And wonder at beauty,

As mere background to lives,

     Which seem mostly run-buddy-run.