Sung Water

After The Moment of Truth, a photograph of Paola Talbert

I refuse to be wool, to be woven captive
to a predetermined shape, or ice
                                                                     compressed
into a glacier, where progress is a matter
of atoms (though I do savour an unseen life
                                                                     moving beneath
the everyday glossia). At times I am beset
by the image of a woman, naked under her surplice,
                                                                     who plunges
translucent into icy water, catches
handfuls of refracted sun and sings the air
                                                                     from her lungs.
She watches her whale-song breach
the surface, her body trails like a chorus
                                                                     into breath.

Paul Scully is a Sydney-based poet. His second collection, Suture Lines, was published by Guillotine Press in December 2016. His work has been published in print and online journals in Australia and the USA.