Shopping

Stooping, she lifts the items one by one
from their wire cage. The drab ropes of her hair,
gripped by a relentless slide, are half undone
and brush against the sort of smile a girl would wear.
She shifts her gaze as packets are conveyed
in single file along the endless tread:
the basic stuff of life ingenuously displayed
and double-checked against the list inside her head:

bruised apples
broken biscuits
mixed pickles, roughly diced
hard tomatoes
old potatoes
slightly stale white loaf (unsliced)
sour cream
bitter lemons
jar of cook-in sauce (unspiced)

something dehydrated in a dented tin
a fruit salad, sinking in its own juice
a quarter pound of tea (in bags, not loose)
a slice of ham, not entirely cured and thin
a Camembert,
so ripe she felt it aching…
and finally
despite herself,
perhaps because the yearning sprang so high,
the glorious, wicked toffee-cream-banana pie that had,
quite simply,
hurtled off the shelf…