Stephen Bone’s first collection, In The Cinema, was published by Playdead Press in 2014, followed by a pamphlet, Plainsong (Indigo Dreams Publishing 2018).
Ode to a Giant Waterlily
Beneath
the moon, you flower
bridal white.
Gigantic Amazonian
enticing scarabs
to enter
the warm perfumery
of your heart,
offer a nectar banquet
in return for pollen
smothered backs.
A petalled jailor,
your guzzling suitors
caged, until next evening
as a magenta dandy
you unlock the soft gates,
then sink yourself
on your second day
to the shadowed depths.
Leftover
from primordial pools,
your stork leg stalks
and undersides barbed
fiercely as an iron maiden.
Your floating pads,
stepping stones
for Lily Trotters, sunbeds
for caimans. Vast green
salvers on which to serve
a grinning child.
Stephen Bone
