Durer’s Great Piece of Turf by Karen Stanley

It sits in your studio, in water
this piece of another world,
this slice of not-so-still life
you dug with your spade.

It confuses the bees
this island among paint pots
and brushes; they linger
in its leaves, while your fingers
faithfully trace its living lines,
feverishly catching its essence
before its greenness falls
in on itself and dies.

It is a mini kingdom, supplanted.
Its small subjects, marooned,
look out on an ocean
of sunlit plaster and pine.

You wet your brush with its sea,
colouring in grey outlines;
steeping soul into the paper
replica – setting its sky on fire.

Bio: Karen is that awkward age between youth and wisdom – having neither. Her first attempt at being published via a Blue Peter competition was unsuccessful (she hastens to add that this was over 40 years ago). Since then she has had eight poems shortlisted on the Guardian newspaper’s on-line Poetry workshop; 2 poems published in the e-zine Loch Raven Review; has been published in Brittle Star magazine; two anthologies: The House at Black Moss published by Clitheroe Press, and the Cardiff Women’s Aid Writing Competition; was long-listed in the 2014 Wirral Festival of Firsts International poetry completion and she won second prize in the Chipping Sodbury 2014 International Poetry Festival.

To read more of Karen’s work, keep updated on the forthcoming first full issue of Long Exposure.