One of my sons studied Cider with Rosie at school and one day the English master came into the class to find a giggling group at the back of the room. Having restored order, he asked what it was that they had all found so funny. One of my son's friends replied - "Please, Sir - Bobby's got a mother like that". And the lovely man rang me up to tell me, knowing how pleased I'd be.
Here's another Laurie Lee poem:
Apples
Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.
The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.
They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.
In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.
I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.
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