Tuesday Poem: Clarity

for artist, claire beynon


she's writing, sleeveless 
in slanted sunlight, a
picture of clarity 

*

she folds paper boats

she folds paper boats, say it

she folds paper boats

*

somehow they float

*

kelp and other detritus

the marks they make 

on shiny sand - she bends

in slanted sunlight

captures them 

*

how often glass and water

and ice figure, the way 

they hold light, store light, 

hold you, store you, melt,
crack, fling it, fling you
back

*

the boats are stacked and taken

south where the ice is, let go

to journey there, like sleep, 

like dreams, like dream boats

*

she's painting, sleeveless

in slanted sunlight, there's
light, there's glass, there's
paper, there's an excellent
chance she'll float


                        
                                     mary mccallum

This poem is about my co-curator at Tuesday Poem, Claire Beynon. I have only met her once for an hour or so, but feel I know her well enough to call her a friend through our internet connection and especially our Tuesday Poem project. It is a strange feeling, though, like being friends with a less 'substantial' being.

An angel image comes to mind because Claire is often drawn to paint the fall of light in the natural world, because her imagination - in her art and her poetry - is surreal in its breadth, because her heart is enormous, because today she texted me today to say all was well with the post for the Tuesday Poem hub this week because she was working on it in a slant of sunshine. 

I tried to imagine that. I don't know her home, I barely know how she does things day to day, but I could call up her outline, the light - like an old painting, like one of her paintings - falling on her blonde hair, her slight shoulders. And all of her would be concentrated on the task at hand (despite the needling, light-draining, cries of a thousand other tasks and needs) and doing her best by it for the sake of the poet, the poem, Tuesday Poem, Tuesday Poets, Tuesday Poem readers, all poems the world over, all readers the world over, me. Because that's Claire.

Check out her work , especially her folded boats (made, I confess, with bamboo not paper) and a mesmerising movie of them under the Antarctic ice; then visit her blog, and the Tuesday Poem with her selection this week. There are links there to 30 Tuesday Poets.