I extract the dory, two packs, four fish, hard with ice, thick,
cut the cellophane; put them to soften in the warm afternoon air
on two steel and a plastic plate; now melting quick;
they’re Rhiannon’s dinner she takes in the TV room’s chair.
In unwitting fashion, I sneeze in the direction of the fish.
I wash them, blow my nose, wash hands, apologise for that act,
then consider how to make the evening dish.
I want to steam, but there is no foil. I retract,
therefore, open a can or two of German beer
to assist in my culinary fantasy, to play
a game of what I could make, the time now near
for our dinner of ex-inhabitants of some Ho Chi Minh bay.
I chop garlic, shallot, ginger, an apple too,
to colour the taste of the home-invented fare;
the accoutrements wait to form a queue,
then I place a plate over the colour there.
Fifteen minutes on, with butter melt, the shallot minuscule in taste,
I eat, enjoying the melange of the non-foil steam
so much, that little or none came to waste,
my stomach full of the essence of a watery cream.
