Whilst my paintbrush and my pen lay dormant, I had a bit of fun on Canva.com and created this visual representation of my gridlocked mind.
We’ve just had a gentle heatwave here in the South of England. The birds have sung from dawn until dusk. My garden is in bloom in the sort of wondrous clashing colours that only nature can pull off with aplomb. And my creativity has returned.
Thus, I’ve written two eco-poems for competitions, plus I know exactly what I’m going to write for three short story competitions. Meanwhile, a twenty by twenty-four-inch canvas is glaring at my back from its easel, if a quarter-painted landscape/seascape can be said to glare. (Yes, canvas, I’m going to retrieve my paintbrushes from the cupboard soon.)
So, what has everybody else been doing or not doing in the last couple of months?
A couple of weeks ago, I braved moving on from sketching to do my first acrylic painting. The subject was a humble freshly picked tomato from the family allotment. The painting isn’t perfect but I’m quite proud of my effort.
Mister suggested I accompany my picture with a saucy, gently humorous free verse poem that I wrote more than two decades ago and then posted on my blog in its early days. The verses heralded from a challenge I set one winter Sunday afternoon while visiting some dear friends. This followed on from a roast dinner and an unspecified number of glasses of red wine, so all present were feeling particularly merry. It involved us each writing a poem in five minutes on a given subject, the first subject being “tomato”.
Plump tomato
you remind me of Maisie
on a Sunday, scrubbed clean
beneath a fresh bonnet,
shiny red cheeks
green eyes and lace frills,
smiling, basket upon arm.
Maisie loves the vicar
and brings him freshly picked tomatoes
matching her cheeks.
She smells of compost and lavender soap.
He asks her for lunch after church.
Their eyes meet over large tomatoes
eaten whole that squelch
as the juice runs down their chins.
She giggles into her lace handkerchief,
he wipes his chin on the tablecloth,
and over the crockery they kiss,
all tasting of fresh tomatoes.
She giggles some more.
He squeezes Maisie the plump tomato
and they disappear under the table
beneath newly-pressed linen.
Maisie's cheeks ripen until she shines
with the shiny red plumpness
of ready-to-eat fruit.
The vicar praises God for tomatoes
and descends upon Maisie for dessert.
Copyright(c)Sarah Potter, 1997
