Picasso's Bicycle, by Sandra Burnett

Bull’s Head, by Pablo Picasso (Spain). 1942.

Picasso’s Bicycle

was blue and for a period his favoured means of travel.
When it ceased to be of use it was propped against a fence,
abandoned to the weather.  

In the summer of forty-two,
left to entertain his daughter Maya, the artist
organised an afternoon sketching flowers.
But the child wandered off and chancing on the wreck,
she asked her father to take it indoors and make it better.

Whilst Maya ate her biscuits and drank milk,
Pablo set to work and when he said,
Look, I have made you a magnificent bull’s head,
there were tears.

Sandra Burnett

This poem previously appeared in the pamphlet New Lease, Half Moon Books.

Sandra Burnett lives in Otley, West Yorkshire, UK. She has been published in anthologies produced by Half Moon Books and in poetry magazines including Prole, Frogmore Papers, Strix, Coast-to-Coast-to-Coast, and Magma 71: the Film Issue. She enjoys performing her poetry and her pamphlet New Lease is published by Half Moon Books.

http://www.halfmoonbooks.co.uk/

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