Pauline Flynn, Visual Artist/Poet

The Withdrawing Room

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Inside the castle, I wander airless apartments,

and enter a room different from the rest

– the women’s withdrawing room.

 

On hand-painted Chinese wallpaper

a fawn walks along a path, a parrot rests

in a peony tree. I lose myself in the garden,

 

sit on the blue glazed seat by the lotus pond,

eat a persimmon picked from the tree overhead,

listen to the song of the yellow-tailed bird

 

on the osmanthus, follow the butterfly

hovering over the rock. I stand here

in my winter coat, the room bare of furniture, 

the wallpaper veiled in a patina of age,

at home in this female domain,

in undisturbed delight, from the world outside.