MEDDLERS THREE In the rustic green garden of Catherine of Yarragon Bobbled hundreds of frightful skulls of medlars woe-begone Apples blackened with ague or rotting with plague on To the wincing jaundiced quince, mug-ugly first cousin Yea, hundreds of death-masks dropping with aplomb Like conkers, round brown faces, some bruised mauve to plum Hollowed–out black eyes squinched neath nasal bar’s helm Curving sepals summon knights from a distant Norman realm Mid a circuit of arthritic sticks, twiglets, thin limbs twisting round Blue wrens bopping along budded forks, titbits to bring down Branches over the fence tugged at by mares in foal to crunch on Elizabethan courtiers were partial to sweet medlars for luncheon
Yet eyes a-twinkle, Chaucer peddled medlars as ‘open-arse fruit’ And brazenly Shakespeare hath a way of following suit. Though Will must’ve admired the delicious irony of ‘bletten’, For the squishy mushed medlar is ripe only when rotten But thin-skinned goes slithery and sticky underfoot Trust fervid D. H. Lawrence to put his foot in it, Writing off this humble bauble as ‘Autumnal Excrement’! A tasty medley of apple and pear, declared those more clement Michael Small June, 2020