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Janice Fixter was born in Kent and has lived in South East London ever since. She has been writing poetry and non-fiction since 1994 and has been widely published. She has a D.Phil. in Creative Writing from Sussex University.
This is our escape into colour –
Venice is awash with it.
For three bronzed days
we are free from routine,
calendars, meetings –
the black and white of life
written in staccato ink.
The canals speak a language
which laps at stone and larch –
we collude with it,
casting the dry arithmetic of time
onto the deepening water.
We walk slowly, miles,
finding cobbled paths between ochre walls,
choosing sentences with care
like new shoes, soft leather,
ones that fit.
Along the Canalazzo
where, three storeys above us,
brazen geraniums spill,
we laugh and breathe in colour,
spreading words, rich as raspberries
over palates.
Soon we will return
to the blister and peel of suburbia
squeezed between
closing doors and deadlines
where we speak in hints
pale as dawn.
Poem first published in Tears in the Fence
Publications:
a kind of slow motion (2007) published by tall-lighthouse £7
walking the hawk (2005) published by tall-lighthouse £2
Walking Away from the Shadows (1997) published by Poets Anonymous £4.50
Copyright© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
