"strange to think that if bonaparte hadn't divorced josephine, the geranium might never have come to france. she would have been too busy with hum to develop her undoubted talent for botany.  they say she has already brought us over a hundred different kinds of plants and that if you ask her she will send you seeds for nothing.

they say that when ( Read more... )

her mother’s garden is heavy

with the heady scent of lilac

they are picking English peas

balanced on small wooden chairs

the heavy scent filling their noses,

settling in their lungs

which will hang in the neighbourhood

for days.

They run and hide

One, two, three, four….

speeding down the street

doubling each other

on small bicycles

hair flying

shrieking ( Read more... )

I have my own recollections of sitting in a synagogue during a particularly long Bar Mitzvah service and discovering the poem, ‘The Song of Solomon’ in the Book of Psalms. It is a sensual love story crafted in the desert around perfumes and body scents; one can feel the parched landscape of the Middle East where this story is revealed.

“…the fig ( Read more... )

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