MANDY PANNETT
For Love of a Burning Bush
You are desperate you say
for a burning bush, ground
that is quivering, winds
in a cave and a still
small voice. So you’d be one
of the prophets, under-
study a saint? You lust
for manna from heaven:
that flake-like substance sends
you out with the hoarfrost
to look for small, white seeds
like coriander’s, or beads
of dew that dry before
the sun. Fool, you are shrub
not a vine that may grub,
hook, pierce, cling, climb. You are
dust in barley, fossil
in ancient, colossal
cliffs of bone. Now listen:
you must resemble an orb-
weaving spider whose cord
is a thin but tensile
thread that drifts and arrives
on a ladder’s rung, high
as the saint you would be.
There are no hosannas,
no medals for manna’s
uncovering. No one,
as in the anecdote
of the blind men who groped
an elephant to learn
the truth of its frame,
no one can tell the name
or essence of manna:
for the child it is sweet
pure honey, the youth feasts
on it like crusty bread,
the elderly relish
it as oil; unblemished.
Mandy Pannett works freelance as a creative writing tutor; she has run workshops and taken part in poetry readings across the UK. Mandy has also won prizes for her poetry, been placed in various international competitions and has been a poetry judge. Her novella The Onion Stone was published by Pewter Rose Press in 2011. She is the author of four poetry collections: Bee Purple and Frost Hollow (Oversteps Books), Allotments in the Orbital (Searle Publishing) and All the Invisibles (SPM Publications). Several of her poems have been translated into German and Romanian as part of translation projects organised by poetry p f. You can find Mandy’s website here: www.mandypannett.co.uk
