James Walton #39 Noice in Nice

I bought the Russian girls breakfast

so poor they were from work,

and coming down the hill pretended

a little English for the couple seeking

Matisse and Chagall. Later, the crepe maker

told me I’d been churlish in keeping secrets,

but then no taste of banana enveloped me

at the olive oil distillery as it was supposed to.

(Apparently the Canadians pick it every time.)

I’d sat on a rickety pew before the stained glass

and piano. And surrounded by suspended lovers,

the magic of goats, colours that strained,

to hold their surging fancy, could think only

of the elongated eucalyptus leaf. How perfect

the Art Deco reverse teardrop, the teasing

smelling salts of home in the curling fingertips,

of the eavesdrop waiting in background.

(Aromatics in patina of a silver smithing caesia.)

Adding to the exhibit in The Modern Art

jumpers and scarves mixed to the clothes pile,

the ebony beauty of traveller students turning back

from the bad boy fifties sepia photographs

smiled to wonder at the growing of number 23.

A grimacing attendant handed over my blue cable,

the slightly shredding goretex, the beanie of many hues,

destined too soon for the cat’s  warm bed.

(The listener had finally joined the conversation.)