Four Poems

Remember the mysterious conversation,
Where it was, and when,
And the positions of wine bottles,
The loaf of bread in the centre of the table,
How your memories floated up,
Floated up and about, so the conversation
Was always a beginning, freshest, for it moved
Sideways, never exactly along,
Dwelling on what? Remember, try to:

Dwelling on voices
Voices in their own time forgotten,
Dwelling on the goodness of the wine, the bread's
Crustiness, these plenitudes of cheese, then back again
It swung, to those forgotten voices, hushed
In a moonlit alley rank with woodsmoke, neglected
...