THREE WOMEN SHARING A BOWL OF CREME BRULEE

In a small brown pudding bowl
with a syrup-coloured stripe
on a brown base plate

our three spoons scoop.
'One creme brulee, s'il vous plait
and three dining-with-the-devil spoons.'

One indivisible glace cherry
at the centre like a navel
how unsophisticated in a sophisticated

restaurant to have just one
surviving appetite after the appetiser
a glass of house white

and two compatriots press-ganged
into something they've never conceived:
burnt cream. Culinary accidents

the culinary leader speaks of
that upended tart with apples
dropped on the hot plate by a furious

overheated woman named Tatin
or crepes Suzette accidentally designed
by someone half-pickled

accidents which on the instant of occurring
or in culinary terms - combining - become
a poet's inspired instinctive metre

a villanelle perhaps, an enjambement
so full of joy its creation
resembles wind through the open window.

'Satisfactory?' The waiter goes past
peers in the bowl where spoons
keep returning over faint protests

'I'm not really hungry but I can't resist.'
'You have the cherry. It was your idea.'
And as the last crumbs of the crust

are tenderly scraped we seem to be
wrapping the crying Tatin in a shawl
and setting her in a rocker, bringing brandy

or toasting crepes Suzette with more brandy
deliriously clinking glasses until we swoon
over the tablecloth in huge top-heavy hats.

---

HEARING THE APPROACH OF RAIN

Waking as it begins: the light
rush of rain through a little grove
not deep but with substantial trees
and spaces, a real undergrowth
in which, near dawn, wild cries
of something fleeing from pursuit

rise up. Just sufficient trees to make
the passage of rain through them a
unique exercise. Premonition,
sound, movement, actuality, all one
and to hear it, suddenly, out of
dark silence, an unwrapped gift.

---

A WOMAN ON A BUS READING A POEM

Not just a poem but a long
sinuous spine-like coiling down the page
the strong spine of the long poem!

Only in a long poem do the margins retreat
like someone wiping their lips with a white serviette
at a banquet, outdoors, under clouds.

And the courage it takes to read one!
Has this woman checked out what she's in for
the long haul of page after page

through which the thought runs
picking images like orchard fruit
musing, giving little bits away

soliciting interest as fishes on the ocean bed
solicit divers weighted with lead
aware always of interest flagging

unless with the purposefulness of a river
before the next meander's due
the reader's allowed an uninterrupted view.

Two pages turn. The eyes scan down.
A heroine in a bus proceeds
like an angel above machinery.