Poem
Jo Bell
CRATES
CRATES
CRATES
Observe that when I speak of cratesyour mind provides one straight away.
Likely you are thinking of the fruiterer’s crate;
a shallow slatted box of rain-matted pine,
the archetype of apples stencilled on the side,
a cartouche slot above it for a grocer’s hand.
Your crate may be the sturdy plastic tub
of the eco-minded council, waiting at the gate
with all its rinsed tomato cans and, in this case
a drowned frog.
Or then again the solid, beer-smoothed wood
hefted by the publican
with its hungover slump of bottles
to the sunny yard, the morning after.
Your crate, in fact, exists as soon as it is thought.
Its shape is shown in speaking of it.
Now, let us speak of love.
© 2014, Jo Bell
Jo Bell
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1967)
Jo Bell is a unique force in British poetry, bringing a large personality and boundless energy to both writing and promoting it. She is a poet and performer with a blog, a website and a newly reissued book. She runs an immensely successful web-based project called 52 and declares that her main work is ‘connecting other poets’. Her various projects include collaborative work, poems for public sp...
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CRATES
Observe that when I speak of cratesyour mind provides one straight away.
Likely you are thinking of the fruiterer’s crate;
a shallow slatted box of rain-matted pine,
the archetype of apples stencilled on the side,
a cartouche slot above it for a grocer’s hand.
Your crate may be the sturdy plastic tub
of the eco-minded council, waiting at the gate
with all its rinsed tomato cans and, in this case
a drowned frog.
Or then again the solid, beer-smoothed wood
hefted by the publican
with its hungover slump of bottles
to the sunny yard, the morning after.
Your crate, in fact, exists as soon as it is thought.
Its shape is shown in speaking of it.
Now, let us speak of love.
CRATES
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