Exploring cauliflower
In granddad’s allotment
Chubby fingers
Tug at cream-colour lobes
Feel bulge and node loosen
Raise cool crumbs to my lips
To nibble. Nibble.
Too shy to spit but gurning
Its attachment to its lurking roots
Its petty refusal to taste right
Triggers shudders.
How could it betray me?
How could it have fooled my granddad?
I’d had cauli for dinner,
Back at home
With garden peas from a tin,
Stewing steak from the butcher
Taties with a sprig of mint
That grew itself obligingly
From every crack in our back yard.
Cauli was never this monstrous
Grubby soil-flavoured thing!
That moment of raw let-down!
Gripe water tasted better!
Clambering back in the sidecar
Dad on the motorbike
Out of the perspex window
Kicking the starter
Till it farted into throb
Purring us home across the valley
The melting moon
Dodging behind the pit wheels
The sunlight turning salmon
On the outhouse wall
The flour-white dust of salt
Icing the bricks like kali*
The longing to lick it
To take the taste away
* Kali is a local name
used in 1960s Yorkshire for fizzy sweet sherbet powder sold as a dip
for lollipops or liquorice
