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  • The Blue Wave
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The Blue Wave

Vicki Feaver

‘Do it now, say it now, don’t be afraid.’
Wilhelmina Barnes-Graham

Your house with its lovely
light studio overlooking the sea
is sold, you work dispersed.

But in my head there’s a painting
done in your nineties
when just to lift your arm

was an effort: a single brave
upwards sweep with a wide
distemper brush so loaded

with paint the canvas filled
with the glistening blue wall
of a wave before it falls.


Vicki Feaver

from Second Wind (Saltire Society, 2015)
no. 9 in the Saltire Society’s pamphlet series

Reproduced by permission of the author.

Tags:

ageing painting poems inspired by artworks Second Wind waves

About this poem

In 2015 the Scottish Poetry Library commissioned poets Douglas Dunn, Vicki Feaver and Diana Hendry to write on the theme of age. Their poems appear together in Second Wind as part of the Saltire Society’s pamphlet series. The project as a whole is supported by The Baring Foundation, as one of its series of ‘Late Style’ artist commissions.

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Vicki Feaverb.1943

A poet and teacher of creative writing, Vicki Feaver is now an Emeritus Professor of the University of Chichester.
More about Vicki Feaver

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