In Jim Ede’s house
Kettles Yard, Cambridge
Your walls are twenty different shades of snow
as sound and light get filtered into stillness.
Eighty-three thin stones duet with their reflections
on the Bechstein’s lid like shells spread out
on beaches at the end of a long day’s rain.
And, though we know we cannot touch,
I’m holding out for your blessing
among the dip and swoop of bowls
and sculpture, a half-burned candle,
a vase more beautiful for being broken.
We’re told the maker exits when the work is made,
but you remain, filling the spaces
and, among your other pieces, here I am,
arranged, curated, taken care of.
* Lydia Macpherson was born and brought up in the Yorkshire Pennines. She now lives near Cambridge. Her poems have appeared in various magazines, in anthologies and in translation.