Soup
taking me down the garden
to draw parsnips from jaws
frozen by the night stars,
then to the scullery
to defuse an onion,
chopping off its squib,
peeling away
the casing.
He’d slice its acid spheres
and pore over them
to find the green shoot
which he carefully set aside.
Carrots next –chuckling
at a trouser shape
with errant wrinkled member.
I’d laugh too, and peer up,
trying to see the gravelly cleaver,
watch him ‘sweat these chaps a little’,
add some stock and simmer.
Then he’d skim away the scum.
He’d get me to choose;
sieve for smooth – my favourite –
or leave the chunks to bob and dip
like flotsam from a shipwreck – his.
* Brian Cole says: “I had no contact with poets until one crashed into the back
of my car in Ireland. He apologised – ‘I’m a poet you see’. I started writing 20 years later.”