Poem of the Week: Fridge Life

As a child you played peekaboo
with the magical fridge light, you
were told only lit when the door
to the dark cracked open and
revealed a cornucopia
of largesse: cheese, yogurt, fruits,
a riot of coloured vegetables
and pots and jars of tasty things.

You close it very, very slowly
inching along to find the exact instant
light turns to darkness.
You have to do it again and again,
like trying to discover the precise
moment that a convex mirror,
or even a large shiny spoon, stops
bulging towards the light source

concaves inwards and flips your
reflection over into patterns of light;
a little like being told you can never step
into the same river twice. All this is really
a metaphor for trying to preserve
life, but you knew that, didn’t you?

Jean O’Brien has six collections to her name. Her seventh, Whole Cloth, will be published by Salmon Publishing.