When I eat a caper
some atavistic remembrance
buried deep in my DNA stirs,
and the back of my skull fizzes
like an Alka-Seltzer
dropped in a glass of water.
I think of my forebears,
Ashkenazi’s and Arabs,
and their long journey
around the Mediterranean
hundreds of years ago.
Perhaps they plucked
those same small buds
from a desert bush
to marinate in brine
and later eat.
And as they were shaking sand
from their tunics
beneath a merciless sun,
my other lot
were up in Scotland
crushing skulls with claymores
on green glens slick
with dew and blood.
This past weekend,
visiting friends
on the Dorset coast,
I ran eastwards along
a stretch of beach
to Hengistbury Head.
As a storm rose
I danced along
that fringe of foamy water
in the damp sand
while the waves heightened and crashed
and the wind wildened
and the marram grass
was laid flat on the dunes.
Running back into that strong blow
was the hardest work,
but going; going was such a blast.
In the evening at my friends’
we ate curry as their children played
and we talked of old times
and laughed and laughed.
Monisha told a story of a man in Bombay,
who made dosas
with a burner mounted
on the back of his bicycle
and when he rang his bell
the local kids would swarm
and gleefully flock to the sound.
And then I ran
on Hampstead Heath
in mud and rain
along paths furrowed
by a million feet and paws.
Past old colonies of crows
and ancient oaks
and intrepid runners
and swimmers in black ponds
that steamed in the cold
while I slipped and slid my way
up to Kenwood House.
In the afternoon I looked
down on London’s sprawl
and saw the words of Blake
graven in stone
‘I have conversed with the Spiritual Sun.
I saw him on Primrose Hill.’
In another friend’s kitchen
near Hampstead Heath
I eat a caper.
Its meat is pulpy
between my teeth
and it tastes of the sea
and the ‘wizard sun’
and I’m happy
because old friends,
like capers,
wring old joy,
no matter
how dried
the husk.
