Delight
Let the meal be simple. A big plate
of mussels, warm bread with garlic,
and enough mulled wine to celebrate
Being here. I open a hinged mussel
pincering a balloon of plump meat
from the blue angel wings of a shell.
A table's rising decibels of fun.
Such gossip. A story caps a story.
Banter. Then, another pun on a pun.
Iced yoghurt snipes at my temples.
My tongue matches a strawberry's heart
with its rough skin of goose-pimples.
Conversations fragment. Tete-a-tete,
a confidence passes between two guests.
A much of oatcake thickens my palate.
Juicy fumes of a mango on my breath.
(A poem with no end but delight.)
I knife to the oblong host of its pith.
Wine sinks its ease to the nerve-ends.
Here are my roots. I feast on faces.
Boundless laughter. A radiance of friends.
by Micheal O'Siadhail, from A Fragile City
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