For this week’s Writers’ Spotlight we have asked Brendon Goodmurphy | @folkmurphy to share an excerpt from his poem, In Morning an Iris Opens Itself (2023). A beautiful, insightful, celebration of live and of us all, inspired by the blooming wildflowers typical of the Tuscan countryside, and supported by the chance and time to look inwards while in residency.

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Blue veins and violet fingers
unclasp. The young twist themselves
inwards but this one, guided by the lonely drag
of time, gives her petals, shapes them
to gravity’s pull, as though sagging
skin. There’s so much strength in drooping.
For each petal unfurls a world and here
you stand in an endless meadow
of tiny universes

Brendon Goodmurphy, excerpt from In Morning an Iris Opens Itself, 2023

Photos by Niklas Adrian Vindelev | @niklasadrianvindelev

Brendon Goodmurphy, In Morning an Iris Opens Itself, 2023

Blue veins and violet fingers
unclasp. The young twist themselves
inwards but this one, guided by the lonely drag
of time, gives her petals, shapes them
to gravity’s pull, as though sagging
skin. There’s so much strength in drooping.
For each petal unfurls a world and here
you stand in an endless meadow
of tiny universes

Land inside one, you will
discover yourself as limestone and dust
caught in reaching sunlight and as a whole slab
of elements colliding through the long
expanding breaths of a storm. Think of all the
far flung atoms that found each other
across star clusters and those final
demanding inches. Scoop up sand in glass
and contemplate the billion
improbable yous

that followed time bending on itself
like a millipede curled on sun-warm
tiles, one-thousand arms gripping to life
and earth, and each other. Why should we not
call this force, hidden and sweeping.
god? The tectonic shifts of your bones
slide so slow you can barely see the glorious
everything you’ve become.