Gestation by L.C. Ricardo

It could be last season’s
wind brought in – 
something – a scrap 
of shivering cyan, a porcelain baby 
sigh, or an old encrypted
word, age-scented
and lacquered.
By chance it catches in the fertile
mind, dormant-lying for days,
calendars even,
nestling, embryonic, in nutrient-rich blood – 
until, unnoticed, timidly puts forth
a transparent shoot.

I awake in summer morning,
ears tingling,
my pillow a magic garden;
curling tendrils finger my brain,
green ferns tremble and sprout 
from my mouth.  

L.C. Ricardo lives in north Wales with her family.  She can be found with a vintage Pentax film camera stalking her children, learning Welsh (badly), and writing poetry in the margins of magazines.