Blue Lilies
The blue lilies celebrating my pregnancy
I placed in a vase of blue-wash pottery.
A sweet force had somehow swept through the gristle
and splinters and sediments and sticky bubbles
of my polycystic ovaries. I told her stories,
lots, but kept returning to The Cracked Pot,
conjuring a water bearer, and his careful step
as he carried two pots to his house from the river.
The first pot was perfect, balancing the water
in a still pool, unrippled, barely causing a tremor.
The blue lilies flourished just for one month,
as did the baby. But I still finish the story:
how the second pot cracked, and sulked and cried
as the water drained out all the way from the river.
But the water bearer said, Look back at the path.
Flowers have grown where you spilled the water.
Isabella Mead is a poet, storyteller, museum learning professional and creative writing teacher in Oxford. In 2021 she won the Julian Lennon Poetry Prize, and in 2022 she won the Telegraph Poetry Competition. www.isabellamead.co.uk