Sven Kretzschmar
Sven Kretzschmar is a poet from the southwest of Germany and currently lives in Belgium. He is an alumnus of Saarland University, the University of Luxembourg and University College Dublin. His poetry has appeared in the catullan, Skylight 47, Ropes, Coast to Coast to Coast, FourXFour, The Wild Word, and Smithereens Literary Magazine among others. He was awarded 1st prize in the ‘Creating a Buzz in Strokestown’ competition in 2018. Further work has appeared with Poetry Jukebox in Belfast and is forthcoming in the Writing Home: The ‘New Irish’ Poets anthology from Dedalus Press in October 2019. https://trackking.wordpress.com/
Lynx print
Had I not been awake I would have missed it:
the wind abruptly blew the window open,
sending a blank page to me – a leaf
from the forest of my study. Also, a lynx
who keeps returning to this desk
where my fingers move over
empty spaces –
the pages of a thin, white notepad.
In an autumn afternoon scrubland
or a summer field wet from evening shower,
forest edge, roadside of a country lane
hung with fog of a damp winter morning,
it finds me everywhere, unexpectedly,
uncalled for but not unwelcome, past
the hollow reservoir of a teacup, paws
delicately touching the undergrowth of thought
as it sneaks onto the plain
of the page where it leaves
its prints on leaves
no longer clear and empty
as through the sluicegate
of the point of the pen one paw
peeps out. Then another. And another
and another until the lynx is back
again – the words are written.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 