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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems and pictures. We pair poets with poets and photographers with photographers. Each pair produces a sequence of new works responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry and photography to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice in a wide range of places. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here, look at photographs here.
 

Starling Calling

 

A strange woman has sent me a poem.

Who is she? And what can be her motive?

Does she dwell close by or far away?

I know what she tells me is her name,

But is she a truth-teller or fabulist?

Does it matter? Here in cyberspace –

Me Tarzan xylem v she Jane phloem.


As for me I'm a natural swimmer,

Dancer too, profile like Valentino

And a lutanist to outshine Orpheus.

Or shall I – a jesting pilot – lead her

In the direction of the true north

There to be discovered in my dotage,

Doddering, though not yet on a zimmer?


And have we been cast as steel and tinder?

If so then who's the flint, and what audience

Will admire the sparks that we engender,

The flames that spring from our repercussions,

The illuminations, the epiphanies?

And when our joint novelty is passé,

Who will love me as a glowing cinder?