Poetry Jam - This Evening Slicing Lemons

Painting: A Bowl of Lemons - Julian Merrow-Smith

This Evening Slicing Lemons

My sharp knife halves the orbs.

Oily fragrance coats my fingertips.

I twist juice from their yellow cups,

and in their mist I squint and see a yellow sun,

a bright green awning, the gnarled hands of 

that Spanish elder presenting me a 

burst of lemon coolness in the searing heat

of old Granada.

My fingers remember the slippery

chill of the red clay cup.

I can tilt my head back and feel the ache

from that first cold swallow.

I squint and see the Sierra Nevada

through the icy fumes rising

from that citrus nectar – 

all this,

all this before my kitchen counter.

shared at Poetry Jam