Monthly Archives: January 2016

On Quality Street

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

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This tin, wherein

You rustle, bustle

Shake and share,

Is where you’ll find

An invite of the formal kind

To connect and get confected!

 

Our costume ball

Will now enthrall

Your senses.

We’ll wrap and twist

And strut our stuff

And boil up toffee

Till you’ve had enough.

Perhaps, a little nudge

Of good behavioural economic fudge

Might tempt you?

 

If not, just there in damask rose

Is posed a strawberry blonde for your delight.

Another more exotic, draped in

Sapphire chiffon wrap

Promises a deeper bite of paradise.

How long, indeed, can you resist a complicated

Love triangle intensely rich and green?

 

La Belle Dame now in your hand:

The Purple Empress with the hazel heart

Oozes as she smoozes all around you;

Deluxed and crunched, gold fingered:

You’re left penniless once more.

 

Dappled papers lie abandoned now

Amongst the bent metallic foils,

And in the swirling sadness, once more you mourn

The coffee cream, the peanut cracknel,

The ghost of nougat from Montelimar.

Their fate of course is bitter sweet:

These live no more on Quality Street.

 

 

 

Poems of Place: Adventurous Training

19 Tuesday Jan 2016

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Coach House Cuisine, Farchynys, Gwynedd

Friday was the dangerous day: tea came with us on wheels,

Our minibus smelling of boys and batter and non-standard tomato sauce;

Perhaps not exactly Mrs. Watkins’s Taste the Difference fish

Was stored precariously under seats in scratched Aluminum and threatened,

As we climbed the heights of Dinas.

 

Saturday often brought surprises after long fresh air days

Like Geoffrey’s Boeuf Stroganoff and the dark brown slush of

Poires au vin du Bourgogne,

The sight of which tested the saporific nerve of even Alpha boys

But nevertheless soon passed our eager invigilation and was gone.

 

On Sunday, the reward for finding long lost Roman roads

Was JAD’s Brithdir Roast: a great golden bird

Displayed with squadrons of spuds and roots

And plattered to fill us up and lift our hearts for

The journey back to Mocks.

 

The Kitchen spick once more,

The light falls in the Dayroom,

Refectory tables are stacked,

The Coach House stands empty

Yet full of the aromas of our histories.

 

Poems of Place: Acela Express

05 Tuesday Jan 2016

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Boston to New York, November 18th 2015

 

Flopped, fatigued against the grain and route,

We left the dark cold concrete Boston quay

In business class, our train a silver flute

Of gleaming portholes and intricacy.

We passed sad sidings and graffitied trucks,

Framed azured skies, dark edged with orange hue,

And knew this was the day’s defensive crux

When relentless night might again break through.

By creeks and coves and whiteboard harbor homes,

We crawled then spurted to impending shade

And halted briefly where no signal roams,

Saw lights expire and all ambitions fade.

 

At this small junction, did the engine send

Its silent signal of how careers end?