Inventory of Small Pleasures
Lapsang souchong with oat milk. A knife’s clean cut
through the soft pouch of a poached egg. The slap
of heavy post dropping into the living room,
finding a handwritten address. The patterns on freshly
vacuumed carpet. The satisfaction of leaving orchid roots to soak
until they go from silvery straws to sap green worms.
Organising drawers into compartments with the moreish tang
of clotted-cream jasmine seeping through my office window.
The way Kasandra on YouTube says swan pose, chaturanga, namaste.
In the garden, every minute germination, discovering a new bud,
the micro-beauty of a husked seed pod, the sudden splash
of red from the first sweet peas. The wind carrying
the long church-bell notes of piano practice from the street below.
The visiting cat whose rough tongue lick could be a kiss.
And the digging, and digging, the weight of my body pressed
to the spade, that sweet give in a chunk of earth. Then slumped
in my deckchair smelling the colour of roses after rain,
wishing I could move and pulse my body like this caterpillar.
And, on the other side of the wall, three gardens away: Hannah
cutting her husband’s hair. And all I can see behind a square
of washing is a pigeon sat cocky on the birdfeeder, watching,
and a chair with a flash of naked torso, and Hannah’s legs
and apron like a snapshot of the 1950s.
And all the walks, each a lap of gratitude. The one with Lu
and the low flying electric blue damselflies, the prize of finding
the lilac wand of a common spotted orchid near the path
in Falconer woods. And the hidden lake we stood in when the air
was drunk with humid heat and the water eeled like icy ribbons
against our feet and calves. The ancient sycamore on the hill
at Graves park where the guy practices trumpet, his silhouette
knocking back the copper sky. Stretching hamstrings
on that small strip of AstroTurf they use for cricket. So many
sunset runs around its fields, its dark, damp woodlands,
skirting the ponds where the rats run alongside in the undergrowth
spurring me on. And the rabbit, Hazel, who waits for me
by the bench after evening silflay. Everything dazzling
and bright green, growing and climbing
against the ebb and flow of these sealed-in days.
And the meals that came together, all colour and intuition,
like a painting I could never recreate. The perfect ratio
of water to rice. The hiss and froth of a little green bottle of beer,
shimmying up the kitchen with a wok full of okra.
The choreography of knitting, the final looping and scooping off
of yarn to start again and start again. The flow state
of monotropic nonexistence, where there’s no time, no place,
no self, only the task, becoming the thing you are doing,
no moth-headed flitting, no forty tabs open, when your senses
are giving, willing, unable to change direction.
Just that, just the joy of it.
