A Breath of Fresh Onions.

[martin shaw]

The season of Charlotte
is here.
To pickle ones work
and store in a jar
a remembrance of summer
in winter,
when gales swirl crisp packets
and chip shop papers,
amongst parking tickets
and mums shopping receipts.

Each ploughman’s associate
on the end of my fork
is a Madame Mazelle,
the crunching layers,
an onion eloquence,
as I fall in love
again and again and again.

They are topped n’ tailed
air balloons
that take me away
to blue skies and buzzing bees,
and to where an old lady
in a straw-boater hat
is clipping garden roses.

Her wireless radio
has all the birds tweeting
in the same tone
as Strauss.

His strings pluck
excitedly,
the Blue Danube,
as the birds hop,
in time
across a washing line,
to an apple tree,
its branches swaying in the breeze.

They examine through the leaves
their ageing Snow White,
or maybe, the Lady of Shalott?
My Charlotte.

[Margaret Compeau]

I really like that. It painted a good picture. I like the last two versus. They are pretty.