Poem: ‘Early Rivers’
Ruth Fainlight, 2 February 1989
This jar of rosy-purple jam is labelled Early Rivers, August ’82 – the date I made it, the name the farmer gave those plums, smooth as onyx eggs, but warmer.
The dimpled groove, bloom-dusted, down each fuit pouted at the touch of my knife, yielding the stone I put inside a cotton sock (relict of a worn-out pair – every boiling dyed it darker crimson – from one...