Spring 2022 – Poetry

Cornwall – Lily Rose Winter

drinking wine on the beachfront

it’s that time between light and dark

when the sea begins to look like

an untuned television screen

noise among silence

pixelated, out of focus, flickering,

i listen with one ear to what you say

while the other is drawn to the sea,

as if the waves are giving me a sign –

something about mismatched frequencies and energies –

there’s nothing holding us together anymore.

 There are two kinds of good poems – one that makes your blood boil, urges you to step out of your house, to do something immediately; another that invites you into a world of pensive silence, away from the clamor of works trying to catch your attention and lets you sit with your own thoughts in a welcome solitude. Cornwall falls in that second category of poems. Subtle, slightly aloof and despite its lack of outrageous boldness, strangely alluring.

 In a world full of people trying to outshine each other, this poem offered me a calm that perhaps spoke to my otherwise introverted and shy self. As a poetry editor, I have often come across loud poems that grab you by the collar and shove conflict into your face, that inspires you to confront your demons, and they are all the more impressive for that. But with time, I have also come to appreciate the serendipity of ones that leave something for the readers to complete in their mind. Poems that lull us into a thoughtful repose, that makes us lose track of time as we read, staring out of our windows into nothingness, for a moment neither here nor there. Such poems are inevitably capable of transporting us and it is this characteristic feature of Cornwall itself that swept me off my feet too, allowing me momentarily to retreat to a distant beachfront.

Personally, I hope to stumble across similar creations that play with words effortlessly and create lasting impressions because I believe in this postmodern absence of a tangible purpose in actions and in the perceptive gaze cast on apparently insignificant details.

 – Shrubaboti Bose, Poetry Editor

Photo by Kellie Churchman on Pexels.


This piece of poetry has been published in the Spring 2022 Issue of Spellbinder. Read more about it and purchase a digital or paperback copy here.

Read this blog post on Medium under Spellnotes.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

The reCAPTCHA verification period has expired. Please reload the page.