The Friday Poem on 13/09/2024
Deceptively simple, delightfully evocative and, especially in the last stanza, amusingly insightful, because who hasn’t looked at a bar of scented soap and wondered about the taste? There’s rhyme and half-rhyme at work throughout – cell / roll / smell, red / rolled / gold, stick / stuck / marks. See how the language in the last line changes from delicately poetic to down-to-earth in order to underline the humour. Smart.
Pears Soap
It’s the shape of a red blood cell.
Rolled between palms,
like a stick to make fire,
it thins to a slippery
cuttlebone sliver of new moon
stuck to the soap dish.
Translucent, palest
amber, barley sugar gold,
fingers are shadows behind it.
The slight smell of ginger
and honey explains
the exploratory tooth marks.
