Mary Anne Perkins
Praise for the shock of perfection in the commonplace;
for this unblemished globe, tight-skinned,
its curve and balance fitting to the hand;
for muted gold, the red and green that stream
from the small erection of its stem;
for juices in the mouth before the bite;
for bearing the likeness of its foremost ancestor
– the blessing and curse, the Eden paradox;
for maintaining that sweet-sharp taste
as freshly through millennia;
for its unlikely heritage from a family of roses;
for pippin parentage: the Ribston cultivar;
for holding the scent of the tree which nourished it:
the tang of thickened leaves around its stem;
for its aura of bees and lush Victorian orchards;
for strength against diseases – canker, mildew and
scab;
for signals of ripeness – the shaken rattle of seeds,
and for the very essence of pomaceousness
– ALL PRAISE!
Mary Anne Perkins, a retired historian of ideas, moved to North Tyneside from London in
2011. Her collection, Shadow-Play was published as a result of winning the Indigo Dreams
Summer Collection competition (2009).
She was a runner-up in the Fish Publishing Poetry Prize (2008), and commended in the
Gregory O’Donoghue International Competition (2010) and the Basil Bunting Awards (2013).
