Snails on the Floor of Heaven

Snails on the Floor of Heaven (22nd September 2008, 2.41pm)

We stood under the almond trees,
waving long canes like medieval jousters,
bashing at the branches until they surrendered
the sweet nuts, raining them to the ground;
we sucked the flesh from nesperos fruit,
the juice sticky on our fingers, at war with the birds
to be the first to the ripe, orange balls;
the lizards scuttled over the hot slabs,
basking in sunlight; the sound of my mother’s
fluttering pages as she slowly crisped to brown;
lying on the lounger, sunglasses squinting at the sun;
I lost myself in the blue expanses of a revealed sky,
thinking that God had no secrets from the Spanish;
as I lay there, I could hear her laughter echoing
around the white villa walls, and the crack-smash
as she stands on the snails that plague her geraniums.

My fellow jouster was scattered, like the almond leaves,
into the Mediterranean, from the shore of a quiet cove,
and my mother told me the seven of them nearly drowned
in their attempts, and she’d imagined her,
laughing down from behind the clouds at
their incompetence.

I lie here, on English summer grass; over the sound of
mowers in the nearby gardens, still hearing the breeze
in the apple tree that has been cut down.
My swings hang rustily, unused for years,
and the warmth of the sun on my face moves me
from this place, back down through the years,
and the breeze is the breath of the Gods
and that gap in the clouds is a crack in the curtains
through which both grandparents peer down,
and if I shout loud, Granny can hear me,
and if I listen, I can hear her laughter echoing
around the white villa walls, and the crack-smash
as she stands on the snails that plague her geraniums,
and I wonder if there are snails on the floor of Heaven.