Bruce Beaver

14 Februrary 1928 - 17 February 2004 / New South Wales / Australia

Lunch Date

Ten adults at a laden table,
two children sitting on the floor,
one dog to bark when it was able,
who could ask for anything more.
The same old senses intermingling
in spooky ways above the food.
The same old psyches blending; singling
to help inflate the same old mood:
love me, love my lone uniqueness;
listen, tell me what I’ve said
while the world outside in bleakness
loses count of all its dead.
Two go out and three come forward,
ever older grows the mass.
I have only my and your word
that the end will come to pass.
Here it’s just another weekend,
summers flame and winters freeze.
The end of spring is not a bleak end
in the land of cows and bees.
We all ate and drank together
being more fortunate than most.
The wind played havoc with the weather
the rain boomed like an invited ghost
to be sent about its business elsewhere
haunting the rest of the stricken state
casting its watery gift of spells where
it would make the dust abate.
Over our zany conversation
the dryness blew its hurricane.
our wine helped water conservation,
our wind rattled the windowpane.
We raved a lot of first and last things,
Five courses vanished in an hour or two,
The outward gale stayed on to blast things
to nowhere known to me and you.
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