We meet by chance
in the health food shop,
gannets gathering around the last
of today’s bread delivery.

The talk, of course,
is all about the weather,
this heat we still find alien,
and the unexpected benison

of a summer shower.
‘Come into the garden, Mark,’
she says she said. Apparently,
there have been forty-eight hours

of no kissing.
Intimacy too sticky
to bear. So, the woman in front of me,
with her pain de campagne,

the unbleached white, rye
and wholemeal sourdough,
and five shiny croissants for the morning,
tells us, the queue,

how they revelled
in some luxury
of slow uxorious smooching
in the warm, Welsh rain.