Cake Karma

I wrote this poem in response to this weeks Daily Challenge to write on the theme ‘The Devil is in the Details’

Cake Karma

Auguszt Cukraszda could be in any European city.

Or could it?

The devil is in the details.

Crystal glass chandelier shines light high

above the customers retreating from the

grey cold wet day;

Outside the large glass windows at the front, yellow trams

cheerfully trundle through the slush.

Two grande dames enter and hang their

fur hats and coats carefully on the coat rack.

Soft, leather handbags, classy knee-length

leather boots, tastefully they move to their regular

table for strong coffee and good conversation amongst friends.

An  older man is talking with intensity, passion.

to a genial, paunchy slightly younger man nodding and smiling.

Three women in the corner beside them eating cakes,

laughing and talking ~ slightly too loudly for this city

(for the general level of conversation here, they have already noted,

is quiet & hushed unlike other cities they have known)

They are not natives of this city or country – that detail is clear.

The visitors are speaking English and only one a native speaker;

the others two speak with accents that are subtly different from each other

Other customers discreetly observe this (and other details) wondering how

this mismatched trio

came to be here, at this time, at this place

The trio fall into conversation with the intense older man.

‘What do you do?’ one asks curious

‘Are you a teacher?’ says another

‘I teach others the ancient Japanese art of the Sword – Iaido.’

‘Ah, a sensei.’ they say

The other man is his student – he suits his role of assistant to the master

Discourse flows on the merits of striving to draw the perfect circle

freehand & the sensei points out how we can never achieve perfection

yet in the trying we are bettered, we learn more, we are have more compassion.

‘That is the point of iaido’

With that he excuses himself, he needs to write now.

The assistant lingers  at this colourful table but the trio make plans to leave

and he reluctantly returns to his sensei

‘What synchronicity, what luck we had to fall into the perfect cafe’

They say, gathering their coats and scarves.

‘We must have very good cake Karma’ says one

laughing and laughing they fall out of the cafe.

Through the back of the cafe, the wise old cat inhabiting

the grand courtyard (it’s staircase of decayed grandeur

descending downwards gently) is roused briefly to stretch and sniff the air

as if to say

‘Cake Karma indeed’

before returning to curl up, to dream of days gone by.

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