The food of sweet and bitter fancy

What, where, when and with whom

was your favourite meal ?

Mine was very simple: fried sardines on a beach in Crete with...

but perhaps that is another poem waiting to  be written.

Watch this space !

Love Bites

I love the way you make

a perfect sandwich.

Slice granary,

a scattering of cress,

then just a smear

of piquant mustard

on the ham.

To each according to his need,

you say, mock serious,

quoting Marx.

I love the way you laugh !

(from the "love bites" collection)

Picnic

First

a few drops,

then

faster, faster, faster.

Rain streams from my umbrella,

squelches my quiche,

trickles into the potato salad,

makes appropriate the name

of my lemon drizzle cake

But we are English:

Waterloo. Trafalgar

Dunkirk and the Few,

so we do not grizzle,

we soldier on

in spite of lightning,

rain and

yet more rain.

Damp, shivering,

Ann and I huddle together,

shout above the crashing thunder,

No ! Never, ever again!

But, of course,

we know we will.

And next time ?

Just the same !

(from the "love bites" collection)

Bitter Sweet

Sometimes a card,

usually a rose -

a velvet bud

wantonly red.

Last year

your valentine

was a chocolate heart

wrapped in scarlet paper. 

It seemed a pity

to bite into that perfect shape,

yet as the chocolate melted

on to my warm fingers

I curled my tongue around the curves,

licked inward to the soft, sweet centre.

You watched with wry amusement.

We both knew that your heart was a cheat,

ticked on a hair-spring,

unreliable, dead beat.

Your mouth tastes of bitter chocolate,

you had said.

Pub Lunch 1944

Through fields of drowsing cattle,

moon daisies, stinging nettle,

summer green,

to a village inn:

you, twenty-two,

I, sixteen.

That orchard garden,

the August heat,

small birds raiding currant bushes,

scruffy hens pecking in the dirt.

Then meat pie, new potatoes, runner beans.

Our wobbly table:

a cascade of knives and spoons and forks,

spilt water,

my wet skirt,

your infectious laughter.

(from the "love bites" collection)

All You Need Is Love

Away in a manger.. .

Woss a manger, Miss?

I reply, 

It's a box full of hay.

No crib for a bed. .   

Woss a crib, Miss?

I said,

It's a little cot.

The cattle are lowing.

Woss  lowin' ', Miss?

Why are they lowin' '?

Woss he bin put on hay for?

Why din't that Jesus ever cry

 (Can't shut ours up . . .   )

Why we gotta sing this stuff, Miss?

I pine for tradition.

see the past as puffs of smoke

leaving faint signals:

shepherds,

                 kings,

                          a star,

                                     angels ...

But I give in.

As the stars in the bright sky

look down from above,

at the  Carol Concert

we begin with

Jingle Bells

and end with 

All You Need is Love !  


(from the "love bites" collection)