It's Still Life

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, 24 July

I’m in the garden
before the rain starts again.
Cutting roses
for the kitchen windowsill,

and a fistful of parsley.

Cod with parsley sauce tonight.
Mum’s old vase for the roses,
tarnished, blueish, needs a polish.

But not now.

The parsley is washed.
Sand and soil settle
in the washbowl,

not many insects,
and no spray used either.

Seems silly
to be pleased about that, but I am.

I probably shouldn’t be.

Temperatures peel off, but
humidity is rising. Fresh air slips
under the open window,

a breeze scatters the kitchen curtains.

I smell rain.
There’s a word for that smell but
I can’t remember it right now.
Stop thinking about it; it’ll come.

There’s weather coming this way.

It’s bearing-down. Lightning.
There’s something haunting about
muffled thunder, it’s a lumbering roll,

and everything about it dwarfs thoughts.

I slip away into my own head,
into a puddle below the kitchen window.
It’s a tide that won’t wash away.

Saw a black and white photo of the moon yesterday.

It was the colour of a tomb,
expected to hear a deep death rattle.
Thunder would’ve been timely.
I can’t get that picture out of my head,

it knocked me sideways –
the way caterpillars gave my mother a fright.

If I’d had a daughter,
I’d have named her Demelza.
I love that name.

I’m named after my mother’s friend
who sat a pair of scissors.

A petal falls from one of the roses
but my only glue is spit.

Ah yes, that smell. It’s called petrichor.

written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday #SoCS. Shared with #APoemADay on Twitter   ©Misky 2021