• Lara Munden
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Glass Magnolias

 

I stare again at the magnolias

cut in frosted glass.
 They wind

around the waiting room, devised

to distract. The outside world

is a blur, frozen.

 

The stems curl and tighten,

slowly constricting our energy.


A never ending pattern, defying

its design. The colourless pane


offers fleeting glimpses of clarity:

 

within one solitary bloom


a section of concrete courtyard;

others hold the faces of strangers,

mutated, in their various stages of growth.

I don’t recognise my own.

 

 

 

 

New Year’s Eve

 

Unnoticed


the first fat flakes


begin their soundless descent

 

pirouetting through the air,

summoning others


into a frenzy.

 

Oblivious


we dance beside them.

Vignettes in windows.

 

Our music


was muffled out there.

Unnecessary.

 

The grandfather clock smirks,

he’s the only one ready


for the countdown...

 

We charge our glasses

then join hands


to sing it in.

 

A blank page, another year.

And snow settles silently

on snow.