My mother craves new potatoes – dripping with butter, sprinkled with salt.
They taste of the earth, she says and remind her of corncrake mornings, crex crex crex crex from the fields.
She'd skim the cream, let it sit on the sill to ripen, hold the jug high and pour, then turn and turn to a rhythm unhurried as milking, till the butter balls clustered, floating yellow as freshly dug Queens.
In her days of gathering dusk, she clasps them under the pump, rinses till the water runs clean.
Grainy salt, the yellow of newly dug Queen potatoes and freshly made butter, the fields loud with birdsong and a relish for the simple pleasures of an older woman are beautifully captured in this finely honed poem.
Things to ponder: How does the poet capture the…
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The Simple Things (Digital) - 1 Issue, April 2024