The Sunday poem: Lemons by Patrick Daly

Two of them, like boulders from a small

yellow world, puckered and pocked,

faces that have learned a thing or two,

taken the rough world in

under the skin, and deeper.

They’re sitting by the sink to dry,

the rusty blight scrubbed off – or mostly off,

with the rough side of a kitchen sponge I worked

into the wrinkled hides – 

then scraped at with a knife.

The yellow rind’s too thick – 

we’ll have to pare it before we can cut slices.

But then, dropped in our tea, they’ll make it bloom

with a gentle tartness nearly sweet

from deep within the fruit

like the grace of youth old people have

shyly covered, hidden but not quite.

Patrick Daly lives in California. His poetry books include Playing With Fire (Jacaranda Press) and Grief and Horses (Broadstone Press), and he is co-editor of At the Corner of Hope and Despair: An Anthology for the Trump Era.  

Illustration by Chris Riddell