Nymphaeaceae – Digital Image, 2007, Helen McNulty

Nymphaeaceae

Among tea breaks and doing the dishes
My memory floats like the water lilies.
Pretty little teacup flowers
Sailing by on waxy green saucers.

Under the spell of old glory (that never was, really)
I slip head first into the pool of the past
Finding fragments cased in slime
Held aloft by rhizomes
Knotted, unknown, ancient.

I remember spending a good few years
Staring into puddles.
Watching the crown splashes
Crash into an endless vertical.
Rippling out and out and out
To the edges.

I followed with my brushes.
I sang songs, so many songs, from so many places.
Songs about Love, Death, Oppression, Rebellion, Building, War, The Sea, Napoleon, Mothering, Murder, Clouds and Food.

The drip of the tap is a reminder
There exists The Continuous String of Now.
I see a bubble on the side of a cup.
Another memory is forming.