Fugitive Color
Sequestered I gather
The visible objects and angles
Of my days as they turn voiceless
Corners grow in drama and I make peace
With vagaries like a thin supply of lake pigment
The kind known to fade or go dark with time
I paint twilight in the mornings and the red memory
Of flesh made anxious largely by my shy approach
On a good day I set about to reconstruct the wall of my living Room across a single sheet of cold pressed cotton
On the reverse side the spirit animal of my pepper tree
Dips her jasmine skirt to passiflora’s lavish mop and arching antlers
In truth alone again I soldier on with a still life ripe and raw
Plum, clay cup, an empty wine bottle’s full-throated embrace
Of flamed admission & I vow to play in this moment
Songs of radical tempo shift and going all the way
The path walks with her wanderer scattering cinnamon
Our landscape grows thick with scarlet leafwing
A father’s ghost throws a net to his barefoot child
But her hands are full with firefly
Forest echo / Alizarin crimson
—
Tamsin Spencer Smith, 2020
Title: Ninette’s Garden
Tamsin Spencer-Smith: “In truth alone again I soldier on with a still life ripe and raw”