ANGELA ARNOLD

 Dancing Through the Book

Knowing the end of the sentence

before the eye quite catches

the little platoon of black forms

marching across the snow of the page.

          The eye of the mind

not really keeping in step, advancing,

orderly – more darting and dancing.

Nothing captured of these mere fleeting

snow flakes of sense, seesawing

and swaying, savoured twice

while noting the warm round

redness of every a

as it leaps up for the eye's attention.

          Memory leading and lifting

to the music of comprehension.

Each page a landscape

full of the chatter of i and o

and the hum of m.

          All busy Breugheling

in their allotted space

till you wonder whether they

would if you weren't there – if

this visitor closed the book,

having twirled and tangoed and

jived through it for a bit,

synaesthesia and all.

Angela Arnold is a writer, poet and artist. Her poems have appeared widely in print magazines, anthologies and online, both in the UK and elsewhere. Debut collection: In Between (Stairwell Books, 2023), and another forthcoming from Poetry Lighthouse. She lives in Wales.

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