Here at The Edge our Aberrant Winter (you know, the one that nobody wants to acknowledge is a symptom of the climactic End of Everything) continues. We had a late lunch/early dinner barbecue. Day-drinking, lumps of dead animal, many broad smiles and much gentle kindness. I am an intensely fortunate Chappy.
How could one not, given the lovely afternoon, think of love?
And love poetry.
You know exactly what I mean; you've all read love poems, heard love songs (ie poetry set to music). But my aim in these Moonlit Campfire posts is to present you with poetry you may NOT have come across before.
So, a love poem....
Armpit by Zowie Douglas-Kinghorn
You knew that you loved her when you noticed
the smell of her sweat gone from the sheets
that garlicky salty sweet frying-onions scent of home
peeling back layers of memory as though fresh
from the wet season when the monsoon rode in
on booming troughs from the Indian Ocean
when it would smell like wild passionfruit
You remembered the parched summer nights
when her armpits smelled like seaweed
and the damp winter nights when
fear and snow and darkness rushed in, assailant
to the cold that allowed her so little sweat
she could almost erase it completely with pomegranate roll-on
Still, you burrowed into the pit of her arm like a louse
scurried into the cavern beneath her shoulder where the fuzz grows
a few soft, fine hairs bursting like broken fibres
holding fast to your love like roots.
..........................................
Once again, the more you read it, the less confronting, the more recognisable it becomes. I hope you're fortunate enough to have experienced something like this - even if it was only in your imagination.
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