Botanic garden
I like botanic gardens. Wrote this after a day out at the end of this summer past in England.
This path leads up behind trees to skirt the glade where the charity fete packs up in the late afternoon sun, putting away the lucky dip and the tombola, unsold jams, arts and crafts. In the pouch of your hoodie nestles the kokeshi doll key ring you drew from the lucky dip. She drew a cute rubber snake, snakes and ladders, but we returned it to the dip to nestle until another day and let the good cause keep the money.
Crushing a broad, leathery green leaf in her hand, she holds it up to inhale. Eucalyptus. A line of white bark against the blue sky, like a frozen cascade of milk.
A narrower leaf from another tree breaks like oil beneath her fingers, an aroma so strong and heady that you glimpse, all of a sudden, koala bears tumbling blind drunk out of trees like this, oblivious to pain, on the other side of the world, on another world entirely.
A third leaf, also hard and green, comes from the biggest laurel tree you have ever seen. Enough to flavour ten thousands pots of soup.
A yellow rose with a smell headier than perfume. You linger longer than decent.
A furry acorn to place in someone’s bed to give them a start, she says, smiling and remembering. You slip one in your pocket when she’s moved ahead.
A thicket of apple trees holding up their fruit to you or to the wind, excited as prancing dogs.
This is how we pick blackberries, she explains, fine fingers darting nimbly over briars. A handful in the palm and straight into the mouth. And there! Your tongue is dyed.
Planes criss-cross the sky, so far above you barely hear them, logging time with jet trails.The vapour melts, not really noticed, for the garden just tricked time.
