Poem 15 - When

Photo: Sally Douglas

When

and when your hands are black from the stories

wash them with ink

and when your mouth is silent

wash it out with inoculations

and when the horizon is pared to a small impossibility

wash out your eyes with potato peelings

and if you think we are living in a tinderbox of legends

wash it out with flame

wash out the book with mime

wash out the sky with elevens

wash out the bones with milk

wash everything with something and

wash out the everlasting and  

Sally Douglas

This poem came from the NaPoWriMo website's prompt for Day 18: write a poem beginning and ending with the same word.

What's working quite well for me at the moment is taking an external prompt and then going back to my notebooks and seeing if it sparks with anything there. In this case I was drawn to something I had written late one night about washing in ink. This is what resulted.

The photo was taken in St Austell, Cornwall, UK, last week.