A Matter of Perspective, by Frances-Anne King

Dance Movement, by Henri Matisse (France) 1929

A Matter of Perspective 

Imagine you’re that line,
that inner arm line,
reaching from shoulder
to fingertip

arching like hope
to meet another 
and so create a gateway
to a place

beyond 
the soft calligraphy 
of nubile flesh, drawn
with such economy of tenderness.   

You would be luminal,
a portal opening ... to where?
A forest canopy
echoing with bird song,

or a musk scented alley
in an old medina
thick with silences
you’ve no way of solving,

or that ruined house
you found on a cliff top
washed by the light
of an infinite sea.

And should imagination fail  
there’s still a dancer 
in balletic pose,     
arms raised above her head

with eyes 
like an Eve,
needing no snake       
to guide her to the apple.

Frances-Anne King

Frances-Anne King's poetry has been published extensively in many journals including Acumen, Agenda, The Rialto, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, Poetry Salzburg Review, Scintilla  and New Walk. A pamphlet, Weight of Water was published by Poetry Salzburg in 21013, and she edited an anthology of ekphrastic poetry, From Palette to Pen, for The Holburne Museum in Bath in 2016. She has won various awards and prizes the most recent being First Prize in the 2018 St Hilda’s and the Poet’s House Oxford, Science and Poetry Competition. She lives in Bath where she convenes ekphrastic poetry workshops for the Holburne Museum.