When I first moved to Spain, the country was suffering a drought.
(We all have a tendency to fall back on stereotypes. When I tell people I live in Spain they assume I must live on one of those fictional costas where no one ever does any work but spends all day and all the long, hot night sitting at a terraza on the beach drinking iced beer or cheap vino tinto.)
Continue reading “positivity check”
While each grape dreams a dream
of champagne-bubble destiny, figs
turn to honey on the branch. Pumpkins swell,
and melons hoard up sunshine, sprawled
voluptuous on their beds of straw.
There was just enough blue sky to take the photo this morning – yes, figs do sometimes grow vertically upwards, and although they look less appetising, the honey-brown ones that are beginning to wrinkle are the sweetest. The clouds are gathering again, though, so the poor melons and pumpkins are more likely to be ‘bathing voluptuous’ in fields all around the Valle del Tiétar within an hour or so.
It’s September, and, with its usual regularity, the weather has changed and it begins to feel quite autumnal. We’ve had a few storms recently, which have brought down yet more windfalls.
Muppet-haired willow
tosses her head
at the coming storm
I think it’s Animal that she reminds me of – the crazy drummer – though her hair obviously isn’t the right colour.
I don’t have many more shooting stars poems to post on the blog, but there are other things being celebrated this weekend, as well as the perseids.
It’s been several years since I’ve spent August in Spain, as I’ve attended the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School, both as participant and as course leader, since I first won a place some years ago.
Before that, though, I was living in Madrid, and August was important en mi barrio for la fiesta de la Paloma. This year, Monday 15th August will be a fiesta nacional (la Asunción de la Virgen), and in her honour I have dug out this old poem. It was first published in the New Entertainer, I think, when I was writing my Capital Letters column:
Continue reading “stars and doves”
don't confuse the narrator 