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Untitled 2004 her last drawing before she died aged ninety-two three and a half by two and three-quarter inches one zigzag sharp ink line finding a way quarter inch by quarter inch into a cactus growing up from the rim of its pot in spiralling thick-fleshed pads it is simple how a cactus grows from nothing but need until the line stops mid-turn picks up and she’s tied it off in a loop although this cactus could go on inching up tugging its long coil of urgent molecules up to the sun were it not for that closed black clasp your eye cannot pass through. 74
page 77
All this This is where it all comes home to us, in the fetch of light crossing the mirror line and only a row of concrete blocks grounds us here in the estuary’s level give and take now the machinery miles down between Stavanger and Bergen begins to heave the whole weight of the sea round. Long swells heaping over the Blessing of Burntisland unroll through the firth returning the mudflats to sky. We are stiltwalkers on a shining skim where clouds bloom under our feet; we sway on our quicksilver legs until we are scattered and the sanderling sheer away overhead, wheel back grey-white white-grey – a shower coming in off the sea. All this. And sea urchins, Echinocardium, blown from the surf like bubbles of bone: the amazed O of all we could lose. Our weightless luck. Our brittle, spiky hearts. 75

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Untitled 2004

her last drawing before she died aged ninety-two three and a half by two and three-quarter inches one zigzag sharp ink line finding a way quarter inch by quarter inch into a cactus growing up from the rim of its pot in spiralling thick-fleshed pads it is simple how a cactus grows from nothing but need until the line stops mid-turn picks up and she’s tied it off in a loop although this cactus could go on inching up tugging its long coil of urgent molecules up to the sun were it not for that closed black clasp your eye cannot pass through.

74

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