En France

We trundle metallically from the ferry, and quickly
Lose the ancient Brits in cars like orthopaedic shoes,
And the silent movies of warring children playing on rear windscreens ahead.
Instead we pursue beleaguered Renault vans and,
It’s hard to put my finger on… but something
In the whiskery number-plate font or
The kohl-rimmed window on the tailgate: gradually
We are in France.


Our journey is measured by snooty poplars, which march alongside us,
Through proud decaying deco towns and dun villages,
Replete with smells of cheese and pate and heat as heavy as Le Creuset lids,
To landscape laid with turrets and spires like piled patisserie,
(Where I stop for a crouched pee, and oversized rudderless beetles thrup into me).
We soon adjust to the stifle of nouveau leftovers, the whips and swirls
From some ‘M’ miles away have crept into even utilitarian places –
From the slant of every shutter to cars’ sulky chassis.


When lost, we are met with shrugs and heavy-lidded laissez-faire
From men whose pates flash in the sun-thickened air, reclining
On plastic chairs by faded cafes in town squares.
Going back to the car, none the wiser, my ears try to hang on
To their babble’s velvet knap – so different from tinny brittle Italian –
Until it is lost amid the hammer of wood pigeons and hot burping crickets.


We become blasé about tackling the markets,
Reaping our bounty and avoiding the chicanery of vendors
Seeking a half kilo of English flesh (je suis Écossaise!).
We acclimatize to tea cloyed with UHT, and living poolside. He sneaks in
To absorb satellite sport – Hanson’s slate tones over Crouch’s ostrich pinocchio,
Whilst I am unable to simply baste in my juices,
But fretfully rescue drowning beasties
Before the swifts cut quick diagonals to snatch them from the sharp blue
Or, worse, they stop waving at me and the dimples where their legs dint the surface are still.


When it pisses down, we confer and agree
To a token shuffle around a chateau, so we go
To Chenonceau. A lunch is packed, our tacit accordance regarding
The avoidance of brusque waiters feeding bloody steak to bloody English
(Je suis Écossaise!).
After our gauche English picnic in the car park
There’s a turn around the tailored garden:
Us, creaking squares in waterproofs, performing
A tightly choreographed route round box-seamed lawns, frilled in pink flowers,
Which remind me of distant men in costume dramas,
Encased in ruffs and embroidery, encrusted in lead.
The castle sits upon arches, traversing the river like the hungry caterpillar.
We improve ourselves, viewing Flemish tapestries, cooing with decorum behind ropes
At booty, dragged delicately over seas after some slaughter or other,
Now coiffed to domesticated objects of décor.

We sigh away our final evening in a fug of barbecue and muzzy holiday love,
A swansong of browned fattened flesh.
The sun sets, coaxing out shy colours of in-between shades,
As if a crack in the spectrum were crow-barred and they escape,
As dusk settles, into the fields,
Where insouciant poppies bob, plump-red in the silken corn,
Like a girl’s sleepy forbidden moue.


06/06