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14 Mar 2025
Phillipa
Trelford
Full
Moon
Mar 29th
Feb 28th
Selene
After Donna Jones’
photograph Blue Hour
The lunar mother is there above him, beyond the frame. Her glow of
otherness can be felt skimming the soft air towards him, her spun
silver face
tells the sun to rest, ocean to find quietude.
Becalmed in her steady beacon, her light touch, the boy stands
shoulder deep in blue,
gentling give and take of dusk-loaded seiche supples his bare back,
his limbs.
Currents, warm and cool transfers on his skin, quiver to spine messaging,
goosebump shimmy along his nape.
In luminance he’s learning to be alone.
Sea and sky merge to azurite, her face pearlescent in a night-lined box.
She welcomes glimmering, the evening star.
His shore-bound mother has eyed them in the viewfinder –
her son in the sea, blued wingspan hour, steeped time.
A photograph, to tether image to memory before he turns.
Radiance claims whole the deep, releases him from her shimmer.
He is ready for leaving, wading out of sight.
Behind the poem...
Welsh photographer Donna Jones published images on Instagram of a ‘wild swim’ around twilight on the Gower Peninsula in Wales. In the first frame, her young son faces towards open sea and the moon. A triptych titled Blue Hour follows on, where in three horizontal frames we see her child, the sky and the water from different perspectives. The final image is a composite: three vertical panels calling our attention to the main elements from the first frame. I was captivated by the gradations of light, the relationships between child and moon. Also by the boy as subject, his mother as artist.