Dinner at Olo, July 2022

Mackerel that travelled north instead of south so it’s buttery and creamy from the cold. No metallic taste. Live in its fullness without bitterness, a welcome. A grandmother’s embrace.

Japanese calls. He takes off his top hat and kisses his lover in Turku. They bathe in moonlit rain. The hat falls in and he dives to retrieve it. She watches from the shore, fingering pearls with lemon scented fingers. Later they make love to the scent of passing horses.

Oh my heart: my grandfather’s pipe, his bald pate, his white singlet stained with gravy from a dumpling bitten too early and too well. Sing buay and duck. The scent of tobacco in the grass of schoolyards. A life lived away from courtesy, in the mud/cake of labour.

Fermentation and time. The strawberry’s virginal rind, a swan aswim in the bay. Licorice lipstick. Prospect of seed. Sun laving. Time smokes the sea breath into salt scalp. Time is love.

What’s found here. Children foraging for sorrel in the woods. It’s edible, the green stuff? The fresh savour of scraped knees, fierce care and a mother handing the errant child a chicken biscuit. There will be years later for regret but for now the day folds gently into oysterbeds and blankets. Dream into cruises/voyages/independence.

Tofu?! The arms of a second love? Desire in a summer bower by a shaded lake? There is nothing here, there can be nothing but cloud fever. This is not the scent of asparagus lingering after harvest in the brimming air. This is not the whisper of primaveral first farewells. These are not tears on the lip of a spoon held and held as if it would make forever possible.

Like getting drunk and making love in a forest where fire approaches and soon there may be sorrow and war but for now spark and fleck and char, the grease to the touch of mead and chanterelle upon which rests bare awakened skin. A symphony of yeses. A bonfire. Flesh as beauty, as swallow and hereness, sticky, savour incarnate, blood worth, yes we are dust but the earthed enoughness of ash.

The chrysanthemum Princess has come to test the flowers. She asks for a rose made of snow and milk. She rests a knowing cheek on the strawberry beds, tasting the exhalation of bees. There is tea for those who have forgotten winter.

Lavender and meadowsweet, the leavings of freshly poached carrot and rice lees on the edge of a perfumery. Stolen bortrytis in a shed, laughter and unshy laces. Who needs youth when the dew comes to the call of ripeness? Who needs spring and its promise of melt?