In Memoriam

After all these years it seems

that scissor still beats paper,

and this morning

the wager is breakfast.

I sulk

as you dribble syrup

strategically over the pancakes,

so that they wink and smile

and wag their tongues

at my reluctantly seated presence.

But it’s the coffee you pour that does the trick -

two sugars and just enough cream

to win me over,

and in my favourite cups no less,

picked out from the two dozen jumble

with the assured certainty

that never quite goes away,

between old lovers.

The first pang comes

when without my asking,

you unfailingly pick,

the tomatoes off my plate.

It’s what you always did for me

since my confession that summer -

impassioned, in the way

only a teenager's can be,

that I absolutely despised them!

How many afternoons did we squander you think,

that same sultry July

kissing,

in reckless abandon,

under the Mango tree in the school-yard

we loved so dearly?

At long last,

the appreciation

of how miserable I've been -

obliged as it were,

all these in-between years

to eat my own tomatoes because you've been gone.

It leaves me suddenly breathless

like the crashing storms

we could get so drunk on,

their baffling intensity

staining our summers green.

And more than washing up,

right now

I want to lie beside you

on the grass that grows by the stream.

We could feed the ducks

and give them funny names,

while the sun melts the winter

of years of discontent.