For Cornflowers to Sing, by Susan Fealy

Blue Cornflower, Wayside and Woodland 1895, Edward Step and F. Warner.

For Cornflowers to Sing

Blue must be stolen. 
There must be purple 
plums, cherries, telling us
 blue insists on the flower.

The silence of the jar 
must be the centre
which grows the painting,

Unlatches stillness,
resists composition, 
detonates the seasons.

For cornflowers to sing
each line must scar
its  making.
            
There must be light
and the idea of a window.

In each fold of creamy linen, 
blue corners 
crouching under the table.

For cornflowers to sing
they must be fallen.
Blue slalom. 
White grave of the table. ​

Susan Fealy

This poem was inspired by Brett Whiteley's Still Life With Cornflowers. The image above is a placeholder. Click here to see the painting.

Susan Fealy: "I am a Melbourne-based poet and clinical psychologist whose love for the visual arts sometimes finds shape in ekphrastic poems. My poems have been published widely in Australian journals and anthologies, appearing in Best Australian Poems in 2009, 2010, 2013 and 2017. Others have appeared in the United States, Sweden and India. My first collection Flute of Milk (University of Western Australia Press, 2017) won the Wesley Michel Wright Prize and shortlisted for two other literary awards.  In 2017 presented on Ekphrastic poetry (one of an international panel) at Poetry on the Move,  Annual Conference of the International  Poetry Studies Institute, University of Canberra."