72. Kit Kelen's 'I find a new path in the gardens' - for the 2026 Flying Islands Poetry Manuscript Workshop

 

I find a new path in the gardens

 

it’s everywhere I’ve been before

 

on foot, and thinking back to this

a garden as if someone dreamt

 

it’s all upward of the eye

it’s in the leaf between

 

from crevice

it’s so stretch to this

 

light letting or shade falls

 

look down lest trip

 

some days bare of such a sky

waiting for a sun

waiting for rain to fall

 

path forks

well mulched

and overgrows

 

garden’s open like a question

 

asks

are we nesting?

do we delve?

will we lift a wing?

 

none grow here but had to guess

nor fate gave out

 

each thought is thing

or say it’s all imagining

 

the breeze – a knockabout

brisk risk

 

afoot, I find

how no one ever was before

 

not here

not quite when

 

all this flourish

no names to call

 

path makes its own way

where feet fall

 

stone foliage and a shore lap

black and white

 

it’s what these legs are for

 

no present like this here-we-are

 

can you see what I see?

 

I conjure these colours for you