Singing as the darkness lifts, 25 09 2023:
This morning the air carries the aroma of an empty vanilla ice-cream tub. For a moment I doubt my senses and wonder if I am remembering last night’s dessert – a trio of sorbet and ice-cream, and yet those flavours were sour cherry, cinnamon and orange. A delicious treat to accompany conversation and time in the company of friends to just be.
On the
drive home the waxing moon revealed itself from behind thick cloud as a glowing
pringle lamp.
Looking back on my week I see that it was composed of seized moments: A trip to Kent, a day sharing my art, dinner out on a Sunday. Conversations, listening, thinking time and laughter all mingling together and swirling now in my head like marbling inks on water.
An apple from my mum beside an apple for my mum
An Apple for My Mum
I need to tell you exactly what colour it was.
Did you ever suck an American boiled sweet –
a blue one –
slip it out of your mouth
hold it to the sun to admire it
before sliding its smoothness back in
and licking the wet sugar coating from
the pads of your thumb and index finger?
It was nearly that blue.
And did you have that gel toothpaste
so bright you squeezed it the full length
of your brush’s bristles
even though you knew the tube
said ‘pea-sized’?
The kind that had you wondering how blue
made teeth white?
It was almost that kind of blue.
And it shone
like the first strokes from a bottle of nail polish
labelled ‘electric blue’.
And there it was
hanging from the branch of a tree
within reach,
four firm knuckles at its base
and no one had picked it.
So I got it for her, that bluest of apples,
and all the way to her house
excitement held my stomach captive
as I imagined her biting into it
or wanting to put it on display
for the whole world to see.
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