VANESSA KIRKPATRICK

Sleeping Beauty

Enclosed in bitter thorns of thought and fears,
Time looped its colours on the spinning wheel,
As you lay fast asleep one hundred years.

The seasons soon appeared and disappeared,
But winter waxed upon you like a seal,
Enclosed in bitter thorns of thought and fears.

Your finger pricked, you did not shed the tears
That would have been the rain to make you heal,
So you lay fast asleep one hundred years.

Lost to the warmth of sun you did not hear
The birds who called your name across the fields,
Enclosed in bitter thorns of thought and fears.

When suitors came you would not hold them near
Your heart, too perilous it was to feel,
So you lay fast asleep one hundred years.

As time was spun, all that was once so dear
Was lost to you in colours of the reel.
Enclosed in bitter thorns of thought and fears,
You lay there fast asleep one hundred years.

Vanessa Kirkpatrick has had poetry published in various literary journals, including Sotto Magazine, The English Chicago Review and Islet. In 2013, she won the inaugural John Knight Memorial Poetry Manuscript Prize, and her first collection, To Catch the Light, was published by Fence Post Press (2013). She was a finalist in the Martha Richardson Poetry Prize (2012), and her poetry has been broadcast on national radio. She lives in the Blue Mountains, Australia.