Not all my poetry is about love, death, queues, and swimming. This one has just been shortlisted for Poem of the Month, a regular feature of Verve Poetry and Spoken Word Festival. When I saw November's theme, EAT, it felt like the right time to send off my ice cream poem, the one I wrote after visiting Shrewsbury's Gelatistry a couple of summers ago.
Everything Ice Cream
Sitting on the steps, I’m eating ice cream
when a dog goes past and it seems we’re each in need
of the way he stops and the way I scratch his ears.
The ice cream is my for-now-favourite flavour.
The dog, caramel brown, looks with his chocolate eyes
at the ice cream, then up his lead towards you,
as if to say,
Hey! This – my ears, the ice cream,
this perfect blue and sunshine ice cream day.
This.
And so it goes sometimes. The dog and you,
me, sitting on the steps just then, open
to something as ordinary as you walking your dog,
strolling past, stopping by to say hello.
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