SARAH

Pellucid as air, with myriad tricks, Invisible but for evanescent clues. An edge described by light, delicate, The trembling meniscus, tense, concave. Fleeting glimmers on the surface hint at form, Concentric circles race then disappear. Mesmerised by motion, I drink it in, while Suspended fragments drift, spin, and tumble, Giving the game away.

Reflections veil what lies within, Or may reveal a glimpse of shapes beneath, Distorted in this fairground mirror glass And magnified, viewed through the fluid lens. The true colours of sand and stone Varnished by a liquid skin, display Chimera, cast by flumes and eddies, soft. A shadow tracery of warp and weft at play, Then gone.

I trace the act of drawing water

From this well of passing phantoms, Ply multi-layered depths, illusions Spark reminiscence, recognition. I touch the surface, see it alter, And feel the moisture on my fingers. In ebb and flood of texture, pattern, The shapes that echo, lines that quicken May remain.

Tidal Pool

Mixed media on gesso panel, 50 X 40cm

Immersion (I dream of drowning)

Letter to the River Great Ouse

I watch your water eddy and surge up from some unseen unfelt force I wonder what is beneath deep in your murky depths where have you been before you came here for this fleeting moment a moment so fluid I can barely capture it on the page the river under the river which blocks have you flowed around what do you carry where are you in the channel the path the water the mud I read that although your banks and riverbed can be owned your water cannot I think you are the water filled with silt and run-off and sewage and ashes and pollen and fish and roots am I like you in constant flux and flow feeling like I am owned and yet in the depths I am water I do not belong to anyone and when we flow to the sea do we reach self-actualisation as Minna Salami writes the ocean as time in constant flux or are we recycled again into the air the clouds the rain the ground water the spring the stream the river the mouth the ocean and back round again

I wonder if the water inside me is also you

I cup my hands in your shallows and carry a dripping pool of you up the mud and silt to the page and you run down spilling into channels finding a path water to water