Sophie
Sophie likes to garden
digs about in her patch
(vegetables and vines ripe with technicolor)
forages like a serf
behind her tight-shouldered overwrought-ironed house.
Corn and beans and scabbed tomatoes
plump with promise
potatoes wilting yellowed in tyres
Her soul smiles at the coldness of the dark circles
on the knees of her oldest jeans
(special for gardening)
and the crumbling dryness within her gloves finger-cold
in the deep soil.
She includes something from her garden
in every lonely meal
sometimes just herbs
garnish.
It's a principle, she says.
You've got to start somewhere.
Sophie
my friend Sophie
likes weddings
even those of people she's never met
people from places she never
meets anyone from.
Stopping suddenly at churches
holding up traffic
peering in
biting her thumbnail.
She wonders if they'll be forever
Happy.
Sophie
I haven't seen her for some time now
likes to dress up, go out
step out alone
just for coffee
Plans it for days
finds a nice cafe
gazing lip-stuck
across the fine harbour
Sun on shoulders
Expensive cake
dense with seeds
eaten with a linen-polished teaspoon
Shiny-eyed to the guilt
sipping her cappuccino
pretending to ignore the bitterness
after all, that's what people like, isn't it?
A quick-flashed smile for the waiter
(they work hard for their money)
And she's thinking
Now This Is Living
as she slowly forgets the town
we come from.