Patricia Prime / Owen Bullock

On Exhibition

sunlight
creeps further into the gallery
autumn day

I follow the murmurs through the white-walled rooms and lighted ceilings waiting for one of the bronze sculptures to stop me in my tracks. When I find it, I am surprised the dialogue is so personal. Terry Stringer's Balthus and His Model is a beguiling mixture of the benign and sublime.

family photo
full of pinholes
there's strange and dark
in everyone

the radio says
Jesus is alive
I go on mopping the floor

On winter Sunday nights, my mother made vegetable soup with hot buttered scones, plain or cheese-flavoured. Dad sat there in his armchair and we all lay around the fire like a real family, listening to the gramophone or talking about . . . books, films or school.

google map
the old house and street
nothing changed

The air is heavy with experiences, traces of emotion, both past and present. A torn cross of St Piran, the Cornish flag, flaps relentlessly and makes me think of schoolboys playing football at lunchtimes.

this day also
is a reprieve
from death
expectation
and plans

a gull
is joined by
a white-faced heron
at the water trough
the mist clearing