Joan Fleming

Theory of light

Andy goes craving all over the beach
with her red grip and her red grapple.

A red apple after dark isn’t red,
it’s a black apple.

She says she’ll black up if she doesn’t have salt.
She finds a sea urchin full of holes.

What’s a blue sea after dark?
Are these the spaces where breath goes?

I find a gorgeous gold-yellow branch,
a colour, a describable friend.

We carry our findings, our branches
and urchins, from end to end.

The blue and red and yellow everywhere
is our theory of colour, of light.

Young salt-footed fools, you know there are no ends,
only ends in sight.