A long quill writes air
with invitation. Crimson lasts
for a day or two once it opens toward sky
or unfolds amid variegations
of leaf. You glimpse the design
of each pinked edge. In green
and off-white spills, every vein
happens against a flow.
Think time: how it keeps
a loss or binds a sudden future
how you live inside an old
regret, how this was always
a fractious fearing to repeat.
No leaf is the same as any other
they say, as if you might mistake
them. The case is closed. A floral
feather droops now in softening
scarlet, and you have cut and sketched
a leaf’s slow flecks. It will
die, as you will, but likely
sooner. Then should you find
another course that livens, as sap
leaking from where you clipped.
Anne Elvey lives on Boonwurrung Country in Seaford, Victoria. She is author of On arrivals of breath (2019), White on White (2018), Kin (2014), & co-author of Intatto/Intact (with Massimo D’Arcangelo & Helen Moore, 2017). Anne holds honorary appointments at Monash University and University of Divinity.