Raspberries

From a couple of weeks ago... freshly picked raspberries... a few were pureed to make a seductive coulis, drizzled over a small piece of angel food cake, then topped with mounds of freshly whipped cream, and heaped over again with the rest of those perfectly velvety berries.

Raspberries

The way we can't remember heat, forget
the sweat and how we wore a weightless
shirt on chafing skin, the way we lose
the taste of raspberries, each winter; but

know at once, come sharp July, the vein
burning in the curtain, and from that light
- the block of sun on hot crushed sheets -
the blazing world we'll walk in,

was how it was, your touch. Nor the rest,
not how we left, the drunkenness, just
your half-stifled, clumsy, frightened reach,
my uncurled hand, our fingers, meshed,

-like the first dazzled flinch from heat
or between the teeth, pips, a metal taste.

By Scottish poet Kate Clanchy, from her collection Samarkand (Picador, 1999)