John in Paris April 2007 -photo Jay Wilson

 
Read by John Mackie, with guitar accompaniment by Mehmet Tevfik Çimen

The History of Ice

In

Les Halles at midnight (and a bit)

And on the Boulevard de Montparnasse

In the afternoon

Shucked oysters brimming

On a mound of crushed ice

Waiting, warming, enticed, soon

Open to the rimming

Heat of your lips

To draw them slowly in

Your tongue assisting

With the softest of strokes

As a taste of the water that grew them slips

From a smiling slit.

Beneath those left on the mound

The history of ice

Pivots on the moment

Liquid thickening

The rim of the dish.

I watch your pleasure

Hoping for history

To reiterate differently

In the passion of our fleeting room:

I already have the taste

Of the heat of ice

Fulfilled by your fire

As I draw it slowly in

My tongue assisting

With the urgency of thirst

At the open petals of a rose.

© John Mackie April 2007, Paris

Jay in Paris April 2007-photo John Mackie