The Basting
Summer bastes me like a free-range chicken
With her wine and oil, and her lemon juice,
She throws in herbs fresh from her chopping,
I turn from white to brown; she cooks my goose.
As I come to full flavour so does she
Her plump arms freckled in the evening sun,
Still working, growing, perhaps slowing, see
The end of her, her kitchen time is done.
She turns her heat down, though her sky’s still blue.
In these long dusks before the drop of night,
The hidden blackbird’s song rings clear and true
Against the soft, slow fading of the light.
Then in the chilling sky appears quite soon
The cool unblinking of the harvest moon.
From, ‘A Bench for Billie Holiday -70 sonnets’ [2018]
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