A Poem for an Artist

Here's a poem I wrote for the dyer and eco-alchemist India Flint. I hope to include it in the poetry collection which is due to come out in August.
India's Alchemy
For India Flint
How she simmers mashed leaves,
shredded roots, pounded bark and berries
until the colour flows, and bleeds
into kettles, and stains her hands,

how the mordant bonds and brightens,
and how the air transforms
the white to rust and umber,
green indigo to bright blue,

and how some stains are welcome.
Silk drinks up the sap of leaf and flower,
colours different every time, and shapes
a ghostly faded permanence, like memory,
like what our hearts are steeped in.

India has a new post on her blog Not All Who Wander Are Lost about a project she did called The Colours of Home. It's not only an inspiring concept, it produced some wonderful fabrics. You can see them here