Stale Beef and Oranges

Victoria C Slotto at dVerse Poets Meeting the Bar: Critique and Craft, guides us down a Buddhist Path.

Through the open window
the square beyond the garden makes its presence felt.
Exuberant girlish laughter - though its dark out there by now -
rings like a bell
bubbles above the bubbling sound
of water in the kettle coming to the boil.

Much further off
a sound like bat on ball or ball on fence,
a dead sound, dull, unechoing,
punctuates the laughter
as boys perform their tricks on scooters
down steps from elevated sections of the square
or pirouette on bollards, just for kicks.

More distant still,
a train negotiates the points
and grumbles on its way.

Now for a moment  this whole panoply of sound
is swept away. A helicopter, flying low.
The whoop whoop whoop of rotors drowning all.

A slight aroma lingers from the evening meal.
A range of scents the kettle's steam -
is it my fancy, a conceit
to think the steam responsible? - now bodies up
'till I can taste the beef and oranges.

The maple dips its twigs into the street light, scrawls
the window pane with copies of a Coptic art.