Summer arrives on Saturday, so say the calendar keepers. (Although the idea of a season having an official “opening day” seems rather absurd, doesn’t it?) I’m not waiting, I’m ready to celebrate the sensuousness of this warm swing through the solar system NOW.
This stanza is from another beguiling Fleur Adcock poem called Prelude, and the image is from my trip to Tasmania last year. Both bring me into a radiant celebration of the body, the earth, the comingling of life. Roll into it.
Is it the long dry grass that is so erotic,
waving about us with hair-fine fronds of straw,
with feathery flourishes of seed, inviting us
to cling together, fall, roll into it
blind and gasping, smothered by stalks and hair,
pollen and each other’s tongues on our hot faces?
Then imagine if the summer rain were to come,
heavy drops hissing through the warm air,
a sluice on our wet bodies, plastering us
with strands of delicious grass; a hum in our ears.
Thanks for a poem that is so erotic – one can feel such a range of textures and hear sound associated with them. I did “fall, roll into it.” delcious! G
good to see this – enjoyed
G and D, so good to hear you connect with this. It knocked me out, but then again, I’m floored by Fleur (ha!)
You missed the ending to this poem, my favourite part because it expresses such wonderful longing..
‘We walk a yard apart, talking
of literature and of botany.
We have known each other, remotely, for nineteen years.’