Poetry for the People Student Poem: TERRI CONNELLAN

 

Narrative

By Terri Connellan

 

She starts up high, facing north

towards slow mist,

watching the sea wash

into the rain’s drift below.

 

She is called to the beach

as if to a baptism, bride-like,

white as the air, stepping

down the rough rock stairs.

 

She narrates her life,

writes as she walks,

as if the sand and shells are

the bones of her story.

 

And the pieces connect her:

an imperfect white oval shell,

a fig leaf from a canopy,

the sketched black lines

of a creature’s moving home.

 

Cool and tight limbed,

she ends in another place,

as if washed by waves,

her contours, clear and shell-lined

as the Borromean grottoes

of Isolabella,

her white shining lights

coming home.

 

 

 

Terri Connellan lives and writes in Sydney surrounded by beach and bush. She has been an avid student in Poetry for the People Levels 1 & 2 in 2009-10.

 

Comments

[Rosalyn Marhatta]

How do we count the lines. Do breaks between stanzas count as one line or are only lines of text counted as a line. Thanks.

I have no URL at present. Must I have one? Or if I need one, will Wordpress do? Thanks.

[Sage Cohen]

Only lines of text count!

You dont need a URL -- no problem!