Steven O'Brien
Chosen Stone
Time halts the moment in a stone.
I licked a numb pebble.
One
Lifted from all the grey shingle.
I glistened it wet,
And un-pent its old memories
From the flat salt tang.
Red and green flecks.
Fluid flashes
And depth.
I've made it like it must be
In quick water.
A stone given juice,
And molten colours . . .
Last spring's stained-glass green
Of broken sunlight
On my closed eyelids,
As we loved
Under the trees.
Or that flawless field of poppies
And the long gold of your skin
Sloping against mine
The length of an afternoon.
Your sudden smile
For me alone
Across the crowd of a room.
As if you had picked me
From all the strewn beech of pebbles.
At low tide,
In February
I hold summoned colours,
Loaded in the bed of my hand,
Wondering that a tongue can thaw a stone to life.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The