Three Poems by Oonah V. Joslin

 

Passing Stranger

 

It’s an illusion, this division of bodies.

We meet.

We pass.

We go our ways.

 

But the perfume slurry, breath of life,

viral exchange, bacterial soup,

gravitational pull, exchange of molecules –

all of that is done-and-never-undone stuff.

Hello is forever.

A sneeze is forever.

A hug.

 

And for all we are different, we are much the same.

We inhabit a miniscule space.

We are part of aeons.

We like to think our role is large.

Then we’re molecules again.

Plinking in and out like charges in the vacuum.

Meet.

Attract.

Gone.

 

Here am I.

Tapping on the windows of tomorrow.

Hoping to leave some mark.

 

 

Something Incredibly Huge in the Field of Mathematics

 

They’ve just discovered a kind of bridge between

geometry and numbers;

a sort of intersection of ideas on a curve.

 

It’s full of roots, tangential lines associated with circles,

polynomials and prime adics.

Conjectures that didn’t previously exist.

It’s a wormhole through the vasty great divide between shapes and numbers

that I always knew as algebra.

Only you see

 

Pythagoras sort of got away from me,

Euclid left me standing.

Fermat and Fargues and Langland… who are they?

 

Anyway it’s huge – this new discovery.

I’ve just been reading all about it and I hardly understood a word

but if it’s anything like the intersection between fractals, I’m up for that

 

in a Trekkie kinda way

boldly bending my mind

thinking thoughts too BIG for my wee brain.

 

 

Why I Write

 

what I’m writing

always seeking the answer to

a moment in time

 

I’ve been writing

for years, decades,

since first I could scribble.

 

So you see

it’s not something I’ve written

for your consumption.

 

It’s this hunger to be,

to set my thoughts alight, to

find out what I think

 

plumb the abyss of

whatever that sadness was

I once felt

 

rediscover the joy of

feeling that if I died today

I would die content.

 

It’s about a memory

I can’t quite grasp. Wondering

whether that was me.

 

It’s crayons I need,

plasticine, shades of childhood,

miracles of love.

Oonah V Joslin was born in N. Ireland. Her first poetry was published in the school magazine. Teaching took over but she never stopped writing. For the past 15 years she has accumulated an online body of work which includes Flash Fiction from MicroHorror to humour, a Novella, 'Genie in a Jam' in Bewildering Stories and a her book 'Three Pounds of Cells' published by The Linnet's Wings Press. Oonah served as poetry editor at Every Day Poets and until recently, at The Linnet's Wings for a total of 12 years. You can see Oonah reading Almost on Brantwood Jetty, from her book, aboard The Steam Yacht Gondola in a National Trust video and follow her on Facebook.