Maybe it's the summer heat. Maybe it's because of the recent nomination of Jan Wong's Apron Strings for the 2018 Taste Canada Awards. Maybe it's because it's nearly dinnertime when this post is being prepared, and we're very hungry.

Whatever it is, we've got food on the brain. We cannot think of anything else.

Except poetry! Because it's Poetry Friday!

So let's combine our love of poetry with our need of sustenance with Patrick Warner's tasty, mouth-watering "The Chocolate Chip Pancake is Innocent" (from Perfection). 

The Chocolate Chip Pancake is Innocent

The chocolate-chip pancake in the dock
is slightly flopped over at the neck, as if
he were microwave reheated. The judge,
a profiterole, has a whipped cream hairdo
that is far too young for his face.
He looks well past his best-before date.

The chocolate-chip pancake doesn't want to
dwell on this, and tries his best not to
while the prosecuting solicitor, a saltine cracker,
begins to lay out her case: Your Honour,
last Sunday morning a fourteen-year-old girl
walked into her kitchen. She was still sleepy
as she consulted the Canada Food Guide,
and poured into a bowl the bare minimum
of granola, set beside it a red plum,
opted for mild cheddar as her dairy,
and recorded her choices in a black diary.

Afterwards, she sat, is in a daydream,
looking out on the garden, at the green shoots
that had just that week appeared, pushing up
through the recently thawed mud.
Then, seemingly on a whim, she looked around,
saw a stack of pancakes in the microwave oven,
and, overriding her dietary restrictions,
had one. Note that she gulped it down.
No sooner had she finished it, however,
than she ran to look in the hallway mirror,
and there she saw, to her mortal terror,
her obese twin looking out at her.
At which point she fell to the floor.
This is where her mother and father
found her, unconscious, six hours later.

Thus concludes the saltine cracker, who nods
to the profiterole, who in turn nods
to the court-appointed defence solicitor,
a sugar-coated pretzel, who in consultation with her client,
outlines a defence in which they opt for dismissal
based on a scenario of wrongful arrest:
This pancake could not be the guilty one,
because the guilty pancake was eaten!
And with a triumphant wave she sits down.

The crusty judge shakes crumbs from his gown,
which means he will have none of it.
With a whack of his meat tenderizer
he pronounces the pancake guilty.
And later, in his written judgement, states
no reasonable doubt can be established
when one is dealing with irrationality.
He imposes sentence. The pancake will fry.
At which the defendant is led away
by a strudel and a rhubarb pie.