Category: Post

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Sad to be a Child

Hot off the presses, this poem which appears in California Quarterly, Vol 43, Number 3 (2017), p. 45.

You can order a copy at www.CaliforniaStatePoetrySociety.org

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Sad to be a child.
However hard one watches,
branches never grasp the clouds,

stuff which drifts like moods
and slips between the crotches.
Sad to be a child

whose play becomes to brood
within a brushwood fortress
where branches never grasp the clouds,

whims are driven as if scuds
and wishes come in snatches.
Sad to be a child

in a copse where dream eludes
the anxious reach that clutches.
Branches never grasp the clouds

just encompass solitude
until someone approaches.
Sad to be a child.
Branches never grasp the clouds.

*

Notionally a French poetic form, the villanelle has been thoroughly nativized into English. Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night”, Theodore Roethke’s “The Waking” and Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art” are among the best known and loved.

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Salted Lemon and Onion Mint Salad

Someone once said that composing salads is like editing texts. The fewer the elements, the better. Just choose and attend to them well.

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2  or 3 lemons
one small white onion
bunch of fresh mint
salt and pepper
powdered sumac
olive oil
one additional ingredient

*

FIrst, sliver the onion and soak in cold water for an hour.

With a sharp vegetable peeler, take off all the skin and as much of the pith of the lemons as possible without exposing the pulp.

Cut ends off to the flesh. After halving each from top to bottom, place them pulp side down and cut vertically three or four times. Turn and slice across again as finely as you can. You will have a mass of irregular pieces of lemon pulp attached to rinds of pith.

Extract the seeds. Transfer pulp and pith into a bowl.

Drain and dry the onions. Join to the lemon pulp. Salt and pepper generously.

Clean and pick through the mint before tearing it into smallish pieces. Then toss the mint into the lemons and onion and douse with olive oil. Sprinkle with sumac. Leave to macerate for as long as you can.

You might also introduce an additional ingredient of your choice, bearing in mind the above caution against prolixity. Each of the following takes the concoction off on a different tangent: pinenuts, dried fruit, sesame or other seeds, capers, sliced almonds, nuts, etc.

For a greener salad, serve on a bed of arugula or other pungent leaves.