Mix is mixed, cake tin fixed
Cake’s in the tin, heat on and in!
Ready for the marzipan, brushed with extra shiny jam
Icing rolled, clean and white
Rudolph with his nose so bright.
Our cake for Christmas is complete
With footprints from four snowy feet
A Christmas wish for goodness sake
All baked with joy in Christmas cake!
Merry Christmas Everyone! 🌲🎅
I made a cake for you and me
to eat our fill just after tea,
mixed sugar, eggs and milk and flour
and baked it well for half an hour,
I tipped it out upon a tray
and let it cool for half a day,
beat sugar up with butter fat
and added loads of chocolate,
then piled it on and heaped it up
and stuck a candle on the top,
then called you in when it was done
to serenade you with a song,
and watched you blow the candle hard
and open up your birthday card,
and then we cut it into two
and ate our cake, just me and you!
Old Year rolls towards the edge:
all but cliff-tipped and crown-cropped,
he grizzles over sticky mince pies
and thrice cooked turkey,
downs a last guzzle of mulled liquor
and stuffs his pockets with fruit cake.
.
He will have none of party preparation –
“like celebrating my own execution”.
Instead, he catches up on old TV
plays Cluedo with the kids, who call him Mr Black,
and packs for emergencies:
no-one knows how it will happen this time.
.
Still, warm gloves, tin of family biscuits,
and swimming goggles,
he’s ready to put his legs in one elastic
and catapult himself into the next place.
If it turns out less than nice,
chances are, he won’t be there for long:
Years generally quit before outstaying their welcome.
Cards, did you ever stand? Or was my brilliant house of hearts,
young fumbling fingers darting in to rebuild broken parts,
a childish and imagined thing dreamed up by chilly rooms?
Do you recall the way we played on Sunday afternoons?
.
In our separate world were marbles, and a box of dominoes,
each indent to be thumbed, the numbers nought to six in rows,
each globe a tiny planet trapped, in subtle colour rolled,
all added up when I was very young and they were old.
.
And when they called me in at last, I boxed and bagged my friends,
to leave disgruntled kings and queens and keepsies in the end.
One hand still cupped around a shell in which I hear the sea,
I peer through dust of lemon cake washed down with grown-up tea.
Let’s do it while the early light is pale and cold,
when our soft and slippered feet still ache with sleep,
before the awesome day grows in its wisdom, old,
and we no longer can each other’s company keep,
I’ll go down stairs and turn the oven hot and high,
mix sweet with cocoa, rich with buttered love,
you follow, rubbing sleep from night time eyes,
drawn by morning’s promise from the room above,
we’ll sit together with our cups of steaming tea,
til when we feel the waiting world can’t do us harm,
with half a chocolate cake for you, and half for me,
a slice of happiness to keep us safe and warm.
Red Kites slice twilight skies:
waiters serving cloud cup cakes
upon fine forked tails
This weekend in the perfect weather
we went to a boot sale all together
the stalls were selling standard fare
from books to jam to things to wear
We bought some clothes for a few pounds
and spent some time just wandering round
then when it got to half past three
we were tempted inside by thoughts of tea
St Anne’s in Arscott is a church
so pews are the only place to perch
As we were sitting with our cups
our twelve year old came wandering up
He looked concerned and ate a scone (pronounced sconn)
and then he ate another one
the question that he asked us next
revealed just why he seemed perplexed
Dear parents (he can be quite formal)
I’ve discovered something quite abnormal
Tell me why do grandmas make great cakes
when no-one under sixty bakes?
We scratched our heads and drank our tea
it seemed we had no answers see.
Will our dislike of messy flour
or too much supermarket power
or evolution or education
leave us soon a cakeless nation?
(answers on a prayer book)
aplaceforpoetry 