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Illusion Foods
Spring
Now husband and wife,
the broken coin exchanged, a half for each. Floral crown on the mantelpiece a dark little stain on the sheets.
Dressed up and married,
she waits for him to lead. He eyes the long landscape, she touches the froth on the trees.
Mist lifts slowly off the lake.
Black swans drift past but he doesn’t step forward. He laughs and shrugs and lifts his head. She tenses, ready to follow.
On the rough wooden table
the salad of herbs arranged like flowers delicate parsley earthy sage blue borage simmering with bees the fat, hairy border of comfrey.
Chanting from the village.
Two figures come close then leave. A light rain falls and she grows heavy.
It is time to put on
their everyday clothes. All they have done is nothing. Nothing is left in their shadow turned upside down cast aside except themselves.
She won’t meet his eye.
He can’t meet hers. Some black swans cry invisible.
The quick path home.
The reek of pennyroyal underfoot.
They fall, bewildered, into bed.
On the wooden table the spray of herbs weighted by dew releases its various scents.
Summer
All summer she makes this recipe.
Pricks both ends of an egg with a pin then blows softly through to empty the yolk, the white.
Flushes the shell under a tap.
Warm water enters and exits the tiny holes.
She mixes milk of almonds with sugar
colours half the mix with saffron and cinnamon and with the finest funnel
sifts white
then yellow then white into the shell to make as if an egg (its yolk a yellow girdle) and heats it over the fire to set.
To begin with he delighted
in the sweet trick then started to long for an egg, the real thing, instead.
He stops at the kitchen door
sees her, her lovely mouth pressed to the crown of an egg, transparent white streaked with yellow oozing from its end.
Autumn
Growing out of the compost
a tumble of tomatoes and beside them, four grey-skinned pumpkin
between pale sun and compost they are warm.
He picks the pumpkin one by one and tomatoes in a viney bunch, a bridal spray.
He makes five journeys to the kitchen
where he wipes them with a clean cloth and sets them along the bench, a garland.
She makes pumpkin and tomato soup
and a hare’s head out of bread they use one ear each to dip in their soup scooping it hungrily.
The meal is good.
‘A present from the compost,’ he says and they smile as she tears the earless hare’s head in two.
Winter
She brushes snow from the path
her blue skirt, its damp hems gritty against her ankles. Her ankles, shins and feet throb with cold.
She drops the brush
leaving the path half-cleared half-lumpy with snow. Inside she drops her skirt to the floor
steps into the warm, rough stuff
of her husband’s trousers ties them against her legs with leather straps. Her husband watches her disappear.
She fossicks at the base of trees
kicks through red and orange leaves runs down a gentle slope to a stream, follows its silver thread.
That night he makes a pudding dense with raisins
bristling with thinly-sliced almonds, a fat hedgehog, they eat it sitting in chairs beside the window.
Later in bed she straddles him
her face towards his feet. ‘I am a Fool’ she says ‘And that makes me an Ass,’ he smiles
‘No, no,’ she says, ‘I am the Ass’
and gently he pulls her under him. ‘There is no way to do this well,’ he says ‘let’s do it badly.’
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