Retreat

By STEVIE RONNIE

Here are the ducks beaking for a mate,

ink leaks from a pen, a robin settles

in the birch’s oxter, the loch’s there

long and letting something to sea.

 

Here is a roof made of turf, a ring

of pines around the mountain’s base.

Here is a nuclear submarine painted black

being escorted into the estuary.

 

Here I am in the estuary writing something,

here I am writing something, in the estuary of

writing something. Here I am by this sea

loch clocking in with the undertow.

 

 

Stevie Ronnie is an award-winning writer, artist and creative researcher based in the UK.

Photo from Flickr Creative Commons

Retreat

Related Posts

Brace Cove

JOEANN HART
Gulls cried at one another as they tumbled through the air, then settled on the water like sitting hens, drifting on the swell. Night was coming, but while daylight lasted, seals hauled themselves up on the exposed rocks to luxuriate in the winter sun.

A golden object, shaped like a window with open shutters, sits atop a reddish wood table. The object is busy with delicate engravings: a cross; simple human forms, some adorning heart icons on their chests; water droplets; and palpitating lines. To the right is a container of prayer candles.

Genealogies

LILY LUCAS HODGES
It’s the gesticulating crowd that holds my attention. The sum of their frenetic energy, captured by a plethora of lines, almost frantic, all packed together from the left-most edge to the right. They demand your gaze. There are so many figures in the crowd, there were so many who lost their lives

Palm Trees

Ho’omana’o

EDWARD LEES
The scrubbing out had been so forceful / that much was forgotten—the heat so intense / that gemlike crystals and glass / had formed, / like strange echoes.