I Step From One Painting Into Another Poem by Sheena Blackhall

All my life I've stepped from one painting into another
I have been Icarus, falling into the sea
While the traffic rumbles on around me

I have been a shadow in Constable's Haywain
Still life, a frozen observer

I have been the hollow bones of a dead bird
In a poultry shop, strung up like a slung sack

In a field of corn, I have stretched my hand towards
A farmhouse, my home once, tenanted now by strangers

I have slept, as an incubus squatted on my stomach
In a Fuseli nightmare
Pictures suck me in like quicksand, deep to their very core