Celebrating nature

These three poems were excerpted from a collection entitled Celebrating the Natural World and the Humans In It.

Short Takes on February, March, April, May

February Martini Two ounces of promise of spring A splash of rebirth lore Shake over melting ice and strain into a frosty glass (Chill glass for preceding three months for best effect) Serve with a fierce twist of welcome early March snow globs of white on branch and twig mimic spring flowers impatient blossoms so randy you can’t make it down a branch to bloom. springtime sidewalk greening clouds of pink above confetti below

Family Supper, Late August

You can’t just buy blackberries. It’s time to make the summer’s pie & procurement involves fierce negotiations, offerings of skin and blood. That’s the way it’s done. Sunday evening the scattered family gathers, father & sons banter, share advice, a meal. How yesterday it seems, they couldn’t stomach to share a table or a roof. I serve the dessert, proudly displaying thorn marks on my arms, evidence of my afternoon’s engagement. We become silent for a moment, smiles and tongues purpling with sweet dark juice. Residual prickles pester my wrist, the conversation resumes. All is more delicious for the scars earned in the making.

Golden Harvest

Days shorten and mornings are chilly but we’ve not had our fill of summer

and revel in mid-day heat. On greengrocer’s shelves, a gastronomic conceit and magic word-local! Palindrome-like, it attracts the eye, reminds us of our own bountiful sun, rain and fertile black loam. Saturday market-our chance to imbibe the local tone, chat, see, be seen, peruse the farmers’ harvest. They present their work, as would an architect or artist, for our appraisal: sensuous curves of late season cherries, pewter lights in tardy blueberries, green velvet parentheses of kale,

exclamation marks of leeks, warty pumpkins like aliens,

tomatoes’ ruddy fulsome cheeks. Apples, apples, apples! Tiny crab-apples for jam, for chutney, familiar Macs, exotic Cripps Pink, choose a lush decadent Fuji and feel your lips wet. Press your teeth against that taut aromatic skin ‘til it rips, pops open, you crunch and suck, try to catch the sweet juice as it drips down the inside of your little finger. When precocious dark checks in, overwhelmed by a gilt harvest moon and brisk evening, thoughts turn to the next change of season. Our golden intoxication in the variety and glut of the harvest will give way to winter’s damp dull sobriety, so we mound our joyful summer’s yield on ice or in cool cellars, or capture it in gem-like jars of delights,

that too soon will add summer cheer to prosaic fare on grey winter nights.

What judge Gordon Thomas had to say:

An excellent collection of work, innovative in style and carefree in presentation. The poems roll effortlessly off the page, drawing this reader into visual imagery and emotion. I would venture to believe this poet has been writing for some time and invests a significant effort into his/her compositions and renderings, including multiple edits and refinements. There are very clever interjections and observations (blackberries and their “fierce negotiations/offerings of skin and blood”) and ingenious uses of space and type (the “ski hill” device employed in “The Ecstasy of First Tracks”).

This collection would be a joy to edit. From the opening lines of the first poem ( “February Martini” ) I immediately sensed a playful and gifted writer whose work would be appreciated by readers who appreciate a wry sense of humour coupled with touching observations of the human condition.