His fingertips burn as he weighs tomatoes
picked under plastic in a Spanish valley.
Last night the ocean gate-crashed into the sky.
The sheep don’t mind, he says,
it’s us has it worse at our stalls,
despite all the talk of warming.
This morning he drove past a hill
that cradles a final pillow of snow,
white as a feathered egg.
We all know the place:
we were warned we should lock the doors
and hide if ever our car broke down there,
or a cult who live in an abandoned farm
would crawl over the brow
and steal us, and we’d never again
be the same. This was when
we drove nowhere, the fears
we threw at each other,
theatrical tricks of storm and wet.
We could count on spring
to scour the stage,
summer to festoon it in green,
the seasons a tumbling dance.
In my evening apartment
I slice globes tough-skinned
as the bare-knuckled farm brats
who tossed bales into the trailer.
A slight pink’s all they can muster.
Far north a blow torch is melting
the fringe of ice that wraps
the skull of the world,
Arctic salt lacing the rain.
The children are grown and gone,
dripping like butter beside empty pools.
In my mouth burst peaches
and plums, soft-brained and sweet
until I bite down – too quick
as always, too late – on stone.
The Market in Winter can be found in Belfast Review Issue 4
