Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

According to my children,
sharply observing me over the years,
I had only one small talent.
I could boil an egg perfectly.
I never looked at my watch, an internal egg-timer
sifted each moment like a grain of sand.
When the last grain dropped
softly on the pile of the others
my finely attuned senses detected the instant,
one rolling boil more would have been too many.
The yolk would have tempted Vermeer to mix his famous yellow,
the white had the curved cleanness of a crescent moon.

Only once my talent failed me.
She had been let out from the hospice
as if on parole from prison.
She had been in there so long that to see a bird
made her stare and gasp “how wonderful!”
It was late afternoon.
We went from room to room, upstairs, downstairs.
She was saying goodbye to the house.
When she had looked round
she said she was hungry. “I’d love an egg.”
I knew it was to please me
so I could use that small talent for her one last time.
And I did all those things I always did,
found the ancient saucepan -
that ridiculous part of the magic -
and went about it as matter-of-factly
as if nothing were the matter.
Some time while I was making bread and butter
or squashing the tea-bags in the pot,
the egg was done but, for the first time,
I didn’t hear the last grain fall.

She said it was fine
but Vermeer would not have been so generous.
For almost thirty years
she had cooked me inventive, succulent feasts
and I could not respond with this simplest of meals.
There was so much to be upset about in those days -
anyone would say it was understandable.
But I still remember each time I boil an egg
and wonder why that upset me most,
as if the family joke was right
and it was all I could do properly
and not always that.