SARAH SCOTT
Leaven
Heapmeal. Piecemeal. Leafmeal. We all fall
into our chairs like collapsed parachutes. Each of us is known
to have been ground down. Each of us has wished
for a meal like this. Wholemeal. With some warmth
in the talk or in herself. In Leonardo da Vinci's painting
of the last supper, the person beside you sprouts
nasturtium-green, seems attached to a branch – Rameal.
On this very fertile ground, another person has found the sea
is internal—watermeal—and seems draped in an only slightly
tousled world. But you are inside the
flesh of a pomegranate. Bloodmeal. Ravishmeal. Each of us lean
into the foreground of the other—Limbmeal
by Limbmeal—to see the source of sun is a person.
So much ground, from which everything can rise.
Sarah Scott’s poems have appeared in journals such as Landfall, Turbine | Kapohau and Fresh Ink. She is interested in the connections between visual art and poetry and recently curated the Poetry Lightbox Series in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington, where she lives with her husband and two sons.
Sarah comments: 'I wrote this poem at Easter, and I remember it was like a puzzle, working the strange, archaic "meal" words I had found through the colourful imagery of Leonardo da Vinci’s painting and its implied biblical narrative.
I love the idea that the past can be experienced as the present, and I wanted to speak to the spiritual aspects of the subject matter through my thoughts about relationships in the here and now. The possibility that our mistakes and missteps don’t diminish us, but are part of whatever it means to be human, appeals to me. I like to think this is a hopeful poem that explores the bright and sometimes difficult terrain of failure, forgiveness and fresh starts.'