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Sophie Baker

Sophie Baker is poet who recently won the Andrew Waterhouse Award (New Writing North). She is Mslexia magazine's marketing and web manager and a graduate from the MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. She blogs at www.just-somestuff.blogspot.com and tweets as @sophiefbaker.

Computation

Take a pinch of the unreal and sprinkle it deftly.
Everything you know becomes taller, out of reach,
looms large over alleyways you thought you knew.
Even the roads should become a mystery – how far
can you get before seeing a thing you did not expect?

What about that speck of emerald in the grit at your feet,
underfoot, underfoot – stop. There is beauty in this,
like a Monet painting of snow made from tutti-frutti icecream.
There is reason for considered approach. It might drive you mad
and you’d be right to go there:

computation of everything slows even the best of us down.
But I am wrong to assume. What if
this is all you’ve been longing, like a cat-stretch
through complexities after days in the car?

There is nothing I can say that leads to answers, only:
take a look, take a look – then look again
with the heat of the sun on your back
with the cold of the shade on your toes.

"What if
this is all you’ve been longing,
like a cat-stretch
through complexities after
days in the car?"

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