cellar door

 

let us think cellar door

cellar door…

is luminance in a mundane frame,
like effervescent chardonnay
in a kitchen jelly jar

cellar door…

wafts petrichor aroma
of earth mist after rain

and vellichor of old must books
stacked in a sunlit room

floats bowed sostenuto
lined from a Mozart score

and copal fus-ed trail
of a long necked lute

cellar door…

is limerence … not quite blushing love
first beating to a fussing drum

is more contained … a spray of violets
pressed in an almanac … bound to fragility

 

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Gerard David
“Madonna with Angels and Saints”
detail, 1509

London Eye

 

loop a piece of sky into the London Eye;
suspend in a gondola upon a Ferris rim
and circumnavigate beside the River Thames

to arch above pale hidden schools
of gudgeon barbel pike carp dace…
mere boney things unfit for proper plate

they swarm their level…place;
they wheel and twist and tilt
held there…oblivious to future

horizon circumscribed…by less degree
my own…South Bank to North across the city
rooftops and Westminster…stern Big Ben

time…time
around…around
seconds…minutes…hours…years

the Ferris wheel takes on peels off
its riders without stopping…save for
infirm arthritic handicapped

beside the murky water
spindle tied….bicycle wheeled
and going nowhere

Bonnie Marshall

Artwork by Andrew Grant Kurts
“Westminster through a London Eye”