Comet Over Snettisham Beach, by Mark Wilson

Comet Over Snettisham Beach, by Amanda Colville (England) 2024

Comet Over Snettisham Beach

(for Amanda)

In an age-worn Book of Hours
or disintegrating Apokalypse,
indigo is split by fire, its tail
an incendiary flail scorching
through deep turquoise.

Photographer, then artist, recorded
that miracle of sped flame, as
if a Flammarion woodcut was
incised by visionary burin.
In the post-technological age,

where such visions are increasingly
contraband, so your hazel eyes
& adept fingers did not flinch
from the undertaking, to re-enact
the soaring sphere of pent flame.

Mark Wilson

Mark Wilson has published four poetry collections: Quartet For the End of Time  (Editions du Zaporogue, 2011), Passio (Editions du Zaporogue, 2013), The Angel of History (Leaky Boot Press, 2013) and Illuminations (Leaky Boot Press, 2016).  A fifth collection, Paolo & Francesca in a Colder Climate, will appear from Black Herald Press in 2025. He is the author of a verse-drama, One Eucalyptus Seed, about the arrest and incarceration of Ezra Pound after World War Two, as well as a tragicomedy, Arden. His poems and articles have appeared in: The Black Herald, The Shop, Tears in the Fence, 3:AM Magazine, Enheduanna, Anvil Tongue, International Times, The Fiend, Syncopation, Epignosis Quarterly, Mande, Dodging the Rain, The Ekphrastic Review, Rasputin and Le Zaporogue.