Seven Winters
for Trish Howley
Once I lived beneath a lemon tree,
wore sandals all year long,
air on my skin, mud squelching
between my toes after sudden rain.
Seven winters have passed
since I last saw Africa, and I miss her:
a large and exuberant friend
who wears colours that clash,
who laughs louder than anyone else
in the restaurant, who sucks lustily on crab claws,
on the sour bite of a lemon.
I want to live with her again.
I want to make my house in a corner
of her courtyard, to smell like her,
of sandalwood, to watch her enormous
and flexible hips as she dances.
I want to live for one season more in a land
where rain is always a blessing.
O Summer, O Africa, O deathless Mama,
make a place for me at your table.
Monica Corish‘s poetry has been published widely, including Poetry Ireland, Orbis, The North, Causeway/Cabhsair, Artemis, THE SHOp, Cyphers, New Irish Writing and The Stinging Fly. Her first collection, Slow Mysteries, was published by Doghouse. www.monicacorish.ie