Patricia Sykes – Flicker by Flicker

Sykes LE P&W 5 Nov-Dec 2024

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Live Encounters Poetry & Writing Volume Five November-December 2024

Flicker by Flicker, poem by Patricia Sykes.


Flicker by Flicker

Flickers of light
between leaves
the flash of wings

between us a window
of ancient glass
it’s faint grime

redolent of seasons
reflected and gone
so many inhales,

exhales, escaping
its aperture
to discover

anonymity
among petals,
fallen from youth

into age’s compost
only the flickers
renew, tireless

as sunlight, moonlight,
stars, wind, here,
gone, feeding

like butterflies
until glinting off
in glimmer breaths.


© Patricia Sykes

Patricia Sykes is a poet and librettist. Her poems and collections have received various awards, including the Newcastle Poetry Prize, John Shaw Neilson award and the Tom Howard Poetry Prize. She has read her work widely and it has featured on ABC radio programs Poetica and The Spirit of Things. Her collaborations with composer Liza Lim have been performed in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Paris, Germany, Russia, New York and the UK. She was Asialink Writer in Residence, Malaysia, 2006. A selection of her poems was published in an English/Chinese edition by Flying Island Books in 2017. A song cycle composed by Andrew Aronowicz, based on her collection The Abbotsford Mysteries, premiered at The Abbotsford Convent Melbourne — now an arts precinct  — in 2019. A podcast of this work is available on various platforms.

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