Poetry

Seasonals (from Ice-Floe)
by Martin Palmer
1.
Sweet pungence rises from strawberries
big as giants' thumbs
as the little knife bobs like a bird's head
through pink cores.
Chunks fall
in a porcelain bowl with a black and scarlet
Chinese word.
Cream ebbs and leaves
small pits outlined like cobblestones
washed in white under pale light.
2.
Outside the scarred door half open in the blue
and yellow day,
a mound of snow lies like thin sherbet
brought by a runner from the steep hills.
Stiff whorls
of last year's grass, the pelt of a lost animal
drowned in heavy weather,
dry in the sun striped by catkin branches.
Eating fresh strawberries on a Sunday afternoon,
praising spring.

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