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Poetry - 2002

The Nest - a reading for Kathryn Mitchell by Lloyd Godman

Once contained, complete orbs of virtue

Seemingly invincible

fragments, egg shells split, broken clean apart

now fall and land as empty cups,

full only of stale, damp atmosphere

They lie amid the domestic blitz of utilitarian white ware,

the washing machine, a fridge, a wash basin, a bed

A turmoil of feminine existence

desperate scatterings of survival

evidence of something emotional

Broken lie the shells with no possibility of intactness

Explosion, pressure from without

Implosion, pressure from within

Whichever force

Consequence lies as

Irreparable damage, a death, a reluctant birth-rebirth

or a long sort freedom where the bird escapes

flies free, escapes the blissful nest

Domestic bliss- domestic blitz

Where tendrils entwine in thinner fibres of pastel colour

splintered to powder dryness

Contained in pink twisted blue and back to pink

double sided strands in random weave

inherent colours or reflections from outside the nest

escaped the shell but never the frame.

Domestic bliss- domestic blitz

Fragments

thin fibres twisted in washing,

thinner in freezing,

thinnest in sleeping

contained in pastel colours inter-scatterings of merger

pink-blue, blue-pink

or reflections of surroundings beyond the decay of nest

© Lloyd Godman