To the Blank Page

Sarah Law

The best thing is you have no rules;
I do not have to cramp my hand
to the straight and narrow
tracks of old exercise books,

I’ll make my own prints
on your blanket of snow,
slip off-topic; spin
out a centrifugal thesis, coax
un-trellised flowers into bloom.

The only hardship´s the freeze,
the heart’s white-out,
faced with your sheer space -
thus I fear taking
the first, weightless step.

I realise I’m writing this
to make your backdrop bearable,
my scribbling a temporary
fracture of the infinite,
the brief bliss of slipping on
unutterable answers as you
turn, rising pristine again -
the plume of a great white wave.