BEAN

My two-year-old toe
curls like my mother’s
as I take the Autumn podium
of a patio stone.

The garden’s plush
with acorn-husks,
pears like dropped bells,
apples, bare-headed in the grass.

My grandmother’s woven herself
through the wool of my hat:
knit one, purl one.
Her daughter unpicks the seam

of a gone-to-seed runner bean.
revealing four ovules
organ-shaped, they gleam
the barely-pink of an eye-white.

What are they?
She explains
the gloss of their bodies
how each can be buried

a capsule descending
Earth’s pocket
to reach a sticky fist back up
pointing out the apple-tree.

Look. Watch.
If I could travel fast enough,
I’d catch light sleeping
under the sofa

I see miss-shaped beads,
strings cut, clinking:
a game of marbles,
each encasing a morula.

I expect a fine fuzz
along the wall-paper,
a leguminous smell
from green lego.

Even now, the sky’s
segmented hull
is podded with rooftops
and unexpected weather.

 

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Sat, 29/11/2008 - 14:16 — Admin