Skip to main content

Drying Your Eyeballs on a Towel and Becoming a Fan of Fiddlehead Ferns

On one of the days in which I accidentally dried my eyeball with a towel after my shower the pain started a thought process about hotel towels and hotel rooms that led to a sudden urge to create a poem. Energy levels being high I also decided it HAD to be a palindrome.

I first became excited by the form when I read Caroline Bird's 'Drawn Onward'. If you love poetry you have probably already read it, but if for any reason you haven't then I highly recommend you make it one of the next poems you read.

I was ridiculously pleased with myself when I created a short palindromic poem about fiddlehead ferns in summer 2020 and sort of thought it would be the only one I wrote so imagine how pleased I was to create a second! I hope it will find a home of its own, but in the meantime here's my 'fiddlehead ferns' kindly homed by 192 Poets Directory:

 

We Few Deified We Few

 

Wanting us to feast differently   

I filled a basket with fiddlehead ferns

right to the brim for you:

ostrich fern, lady fern, bracken.

Tossing their bitterness

with garlic and rock salt.

 

Look, I tell you, I have foraged

this taste for you.

 

I let lemon zest fall on

those curled caterpillars

amongst the charred green-brown leaves.

 

We do not mention

that vague muddiness on our tongues.

We do not mention,

amongst the charred green-brown leaves,

those curled caterpillars.

 

I let lemon zest fall on

this taste for you.

 

Look, I tell you, I have foraged.

 

With garlic and rock salt

tossing their bitterness;

ostrich fern, lady fern, bracken.

 

Right to the brim for you

I filled a basket with fiddlehead ferns;

wanting us to feast differently.

 

Video reading of We Few Deified We Few

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is He Puffin or Is He Vulture? (Episode 39)

  Singing as the Darkness Lifts, Episode 39 Is He Puffin or Is He Vulture? PodBean Link for those who like to listen   This morning the smell of cut grass is in the air, slightly hayed by yesterday’s sunshine and today’s gentle misty drizzle.   This week’s photo had to be ‘Ronnie Jumping for Joy at The Great Orme’. Not just because I love that orme, not just because it is the picture for June on the #LookThere calendar, but because of the alt text suggestion I got when I was preparing to share it on social media to welcome in the new month. This alt text has to be one of my absolute favourites... “May be an image of puffin and vulture.” It made me laugh each time I thought of it and wondered which one of those Ronnie was! In this Word document alt text says it’s a stuffed animal in the air, which makes me love the alternative version that appeared the other day even more.   I love to find humour in things. I find i...
Post a Comment
Read more

A Large Sturgeon, A Peppermint Tea and a Fizzy Water (Episode 36)

  Singing as the Darkness Lifts, Episode 36 A large Sturgeon, A Peppermint Tea and a Fizzy Water PodBean Link for those who like to listen This morning the air carries the scent of warm, damp hay. The birds were singing the day in loudly when I noticed this, and seemed to be telling me they had been doing so for some time this morning before I woke from my sleep to greet the day.   I am currently celebrating the joy of staying present and being fully in the moment. On Thursday last week this was huge for me because I was launching my book, and I was determined to enjoy my own reading and be able to immerse myself fully in the words of others.   My goal was to have moved on from the reading I did in October where I spent a lot of time beforehand overthinking it, because I did not know the best ways to tackle the nerves that rose in my stomach. I wanted to have less of that feeling that I captured in the poem ‘There’s a Doll Thumping in My Ch...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Bandstand (Episode 41)

  Singing as the Darkness Lifts, Episode 41 The Bandstand PodBean Link for those who like to listen    Photo credit: @fieldofdreamsphotososwestry   This morning the air brings the smell of many blooms. In my head I picture peonies and geraniums and in my heart I feel summer. It has been pretty cold, grey and rainy for June so far so this feels new and enlivening. It begins to balance the fact that my eyes that did not want to open this morning.   On Saturday I put on my new t-shirt and headed for the bandstand in the park in Oswestry ready for the town’s first Pride festival. I also packed a jumper and a coat. I even used my hood on arrival because it was very rainy. I had to hold it away from my ears so I could keep my wits about me when crossing the road, but thought it was better than turning up looking like what my nan would have termed a drowned rat. Fortunately, the downpour stopped before the entertainment ...
Post a Comment
Read more