In the small shop
In the small shop, where apples shrink, Potatoes sprout, the lettuce is green leather, Past tins, they draw me, bright enough to drink, Red Pools in the brown crumpled bag. No lip Curves so fully. Nipples are shabby roses.
A knee might shine as roundly, briefly glimpsed.
Their skin is flecked, as fish in sunlit water Hang. The bitten flesh is oddly pale As though unripened. 'Do they,' asks my daughter 'Have pips?' (She hates pips) 'Only one large stone.' , Which I have seen, sucked yellow and quite bare On sunlit pavements, which I crossed alone.
Say, if you must, the look of them is best Tense skin, sour water, then the jar on teeth From foaming flower to salt wave, better guessed.
The sun is rising slowly past the trees.
The crates and bundles shift upon the deck. The people stand in silence on the quays Waiting, leafed in mist, for the first ferries.
They glisten, held in darkness, smoulder. Nothing. In all the world's wide summer tastes like cherries.
Alison Brackenbury
Previous page
