A Pome a Day for a Year

Twinkles, tinkles, sprinkles and smashes,
ears pricked up at the clattering crashing
and opposal to the soft hum of conversation.
You know the kind? The drone
that blends a thousand voices into a patter of
brrrrrrrrmmmm.

This restaurant was in a state of zen,
its operation at peak, people:
entering, munching, milling, paying, tipping, leaving
and it lurches to a halt,
like the world stopped turning
surprising us all.

A raccoon had entered,
they are not your standard patrons,
and it has no sense of queuing or ordering.
Its mind overloaded with desires for sustenance,
little claws grab purchase on chair back and table cloth,
it bounds between areas looking for the kitchen.

As it sails through the space of the eatery,
customers gape wide eyed while employees grimace,
shouts of ‘shoo’ and ‘Watch out for that rotisserie!’ fill eardrums.

It needs that dinner, that carvery, that buffet, that burger,
this little guy wants it all and
decorum is a word applied to only humans.