The Damson Making

Image courtesy of the internet

The Damson Making

An outraged cry fills the kitchen

‘It’s my turn to lick the basin

You licked the spoon first last time

Mammy made damson plum jam.”

 

Small elbows work their way in

Bringing a gasp from the ribs

Of the assembled siblings

Around the Sunday Express savin’the table

 

Steeped jam jars in the sink

Gathered last weekend

For a penny a time

From hedgerows and narrow lanes

Bob up and down like elegant herring

The kitchen bulb glinting off their glassy mouths gulping water

 

The damsons’ bubbles and gurgles

Filling the kitchen with a sweet aroma

Straining in the muslin cloth begins

A delicate affair

With dire warnings of burns and scalds

 

Soothing out the crinkled black inked paper

Splotched with artful fruit off the vine design

Head on one side we devour the printed lines

Blotches of damson red firing up our inquisitive mind

Of what it hides beneath the stain

 

Learning things our mother never intended

In the jam making process

Pictures, stories of love in faraway places

Images of scantily clad ladies

The dripped bubbling crimson blobs

Disappointingly protecting modesty

 

Cheeks heated by bubbling fruit and heady imagery

Our fertile minds take flight imagining

What lies beneath the flat-bottomed basin?

Straining in the middle of the table

Where the best stories are waiting

To be discovered

In the tablecloth paper

 

One pound jars and stout two pounders

Little dainty delicate jars you’d see

In Jackson’s Hotel in Ballybofey

Where Uncle Bill, the returned New Yorker

Takes our mother, father and Mrs Annie Gallagher to tea

On a Sunday evening

 

Into the sparkling jars kosan gas scalded

Our mother steady handed

Ladles the sticky sweet fruit rich as liquid rubies

 

The rim of cooling basin breached

The helpers swoop and sup with spoons and dipped fingers

The wooden spoon grasped firmly in the youngest hand

Scrapes on the pot’s inner sides with delighted sighs

 

Tracing fingers catches the drips

Meandering down the sides of jars

Lined up line like soldiers on parade

Waiting for their lids and labels

 

Jam making completed to mother’s satisfaction

Lathered liberally with the fresh stewed damsons

Warm scone bread cut thick as your arm

Reward for the jam making helpers in the kitchen

G C Hill 2016  all right reserved