Heroics is a September poem, a celebration of porridge, blackberries and human resourcefulness and boundless love and energy.
Heroics – September Poem
First, on rising, she puts down a fire and heats
the slate slab and then, using her mother’s rolling pin
she rolls oats stolen from the horse’s trough next door
right after pinching a pail of milk. The wood and heat
crush the grains, the slab shares the fire's heat, the flakes
soon jumbo, the kids, still and tucked up, each little body
beside a hot water bottle, cold drops leaking but dawn
is giving way to the day, socks need pulling up, she steps
down the lane where in September, blackberries tower over
wilting trees and take from greening hedges. The moss
beneath her feet feels soft in wellies, the berries need
a good eye and nimble fingers. Squashed or half-pecked,
they won’t do. And she can tell by the stretch of the rays
how much time before the sun will tickle her little ones
awake, wants them woken by the smell of porridge with
berry high-notes and honey’s joining, still. Picking, she fills
the bowl with the hole, the chill is biting her fingers. Once,
she saw her little girl crushing a berry between her thumb and
index finger and rubbing the red on her lips, and she wears
lipstick stirring the loot and watches the steam rise and
wind its way on up the stairs and into tiny nostrils.
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