Rhapsody

Judith Bishop

in which brown makes a foil for a thousand

events of knowledge blooming in a stroke

in which her hand dived and planted

something greater than a leaf

of which her back has bent and broken from the branch

a thousand sprigs

where the name hangs hidden that’s unravelled

by the work

by the side of which she sang

with the patience of a wasp

songs in which her body rings the yearly

changes of the place

as her leaves rush the canvas, purling this way

and that, caught in currents

of her memory, her feeling and her thought,

little blades

to pierce the dimness of an ordinary life

with a human luminosity, belief

Judith Bishop is a Sydney poet, linguist and translator. Event (Salt Publishing, 2007), her first collection, won the Anne Elder award and was shortlisted in the 2008 Victorian and Queensland Premier’s Awards.