Aubade with Half a Lemon on the Summer Solstice
Padraig Regan
Sleep was a paltry wafer
after we’d come back
from watching the tide
expose the beach’s softer
districts & the sun
beginning to spill through
a murder-hole in an
architrave of clouds. The
open half of a lemon had
been left in the kitchen,
weeping into the grain of
the table. The table
corresponds with the
woody pips; the lemon
corresponds with a
breakfast of fried eggs &
butter melting into a slice
of toast. It donated its
other half to the piquancy
of gin & tonics. I squeeze
out what’s left of the juice
& a paper cut I didn’t know
I had begins to sing
Puccini’s Vissi d’Arte.
Feature Date
- March 7, 2021
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Excerpted from NEW POETRIES VIII: AN ANTHOLOGY: edited by Michael Schmidt and John McAuliffe
Published by Carcanet 2020.
Copyright © 2016 Padraig Regan
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Originally published in DELICIOUS, Lifeboat Press (2016).
Manchester
England
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