A poem by GERALDINE MITCHELL
I would like my life to be
a winter vegetable garden,
an unfenced strip at the edge
of a fallow field. Stout leeks
standing shoulder to shoulder,
brassicas blousy and generous,
silver artichokes spiky, aloof.
I would like to have the good sense to know
the nature of winter and welcome it,
my roots clawed deep to steady me
against the tramontane or even snow.
Relishing the chance
to comb the dormant subsoil.
I would like people passing on their way to the supermarket
in their centrally heated cars
to be taken unawares:
a warm kitchen, a lifted lid,
rich steam rushing past their cheeks.
To assault them with a memory
they didn’t know was there.
Geraldine Mitchell
