Muse

​white mountains stretch across my singly occupied queen

they are alps through the airbus pane I skim

to the southern lake     trusting autopilot

& air traffic control   just as I entrusted limbs to my surgeon

impatient in his weird theatre disguise when focus faded

flight over a scene of crinkles   sheer heights snow daubed

seismic schisms & troughs shaded with loss barely endured

I move to realign the cast holding bones pinned

plates screwed   plural osteotomies

incarcerated under the down & feathered cover

mimicking topography of convulsed earth & bodies prone

there are paintings of this bed linen muse

gallery walls smothered with white images

oil-draped in fake fabric to replicate sensuous abandon

crumpled sheets lie in erotic folds holding night testimony

simulating land’s endless iterations yet again

the vacuous point of the paintings immaterial

in the exhibition space of loss

I wander in these valleys of the shadows

seeking reprieve from spasms & grief as bones slowly fuse

at the same pace confusion converts to clarity

crossing the ridges holding memory of our pinnacles close

striving on crutches to outpace the absence

of you

​Suzanne Herschell is a Fellow of the NZ Academy of Fine Arts, artist, curator, poet and Pushcart Prize nominee. Her poems have been published in Meniscus (Australia), NZ Poetry Society, Shot Glass Journal & Fib Review (USA), The Ghazal Page, various anthologies, NZ & US National Poetry Day selections, and Volume 12

Katherine Mansfield Studies Edinburgh University Press.

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