Poem 472

Mysteries of the plants and seasons … no light earth or water under the sink where forgotten onions and potatoes nevertheless respond to life’s distant but insistent call with swelling profusion … for me this gives a strong visual impression of the contrast of the outside and the inside, light and dark, pretty and the primal and their attendant climates …

( I love the image of spring leaves and blossom as the trees drenched in light and the way it repeats to frame beginning middle and end of the poem … the image of winter as an old onion and the description of milk bottles in all their shades of clear … dancing leaves as slits in the dress of a tree … the return to the sink trap in the image of winter as a rattling ring and how that underlines that the hidden away sink cupboard is the last place winter releases its grip and consequently is also the incontrovertible proof that the seasons have changed … )

Spring In The Sink Cupboard

Trees are drenched in light
and the sturdy slick green of shoots
butting antlers out of the dark
loose onion
                        winter
the deep gleam of milk bottles
under the sink
in all their shades of clear
the dank cupboard
and strange round-elbowed
bend of the sink trap
everything in the dark
sprouting its own smooth story
potatoes hairy genitals
green-pronged onions shuffling
out of old shed skins
outside trees are drenched
                                                          and dancing
a million razor slits
in every dress
while growth tongue out
licks even the inside
of this last chance crepuscular cupboard
that trapped the hard rattle
of winter like a ring
in its throat
                        all the trees are drenched
                        in light