The Ice Cream

The Ice Cream

Stir it up. Swirl the colours: cream, pale yellow or dainty pink

Stir it up. Gyrate the streaks, earthy brown or black like ink.

Spirals agitate, a geology of Neapolitan dessert, different but with a link.

The spoon excavates the ice cream, making whorls of flavour

Gently, imperceptibly the patterns fade and die, but savour

The chill, the thrill, a summer’s day, a rest from daily labour.

The dog runs free across the bay, splashes in salt water the colour of Turkish delight.

The ice is melting, a vortex of sweetness, gone the shades of the traffic light

One creamy muddle, round and round, a sundae whirlpool ammonite.

Ketton cream or German brown, oolitic pink cliffs formed in ice,

Sedimentary streaks of colour, volcanic ice cream bombs sprinkled like silver rice,

Rocks that shine, or glint or fragment, or metamorphic gneiss.

Wandering aimlessly along strata, ice cream tub sticky, lost gradation

The Jurassic Coast looms large against aquamarine sky, white jewelled encrustation.

The dog, in joy aloud she barks, the ice cream drips and breaks the contemplation.

Striations of history, rock striped through and through, keeping us safe and watertight,

Pillars of rock brooding and towering down, awe and inspiring Heritage Site

Jurassic cliffs that have stood the tests of time, keep us safe by day and by night.

By Linda Prince