Company Policy

We are gathered drinking sherry, making small talk,
Wearing glad rags, being furtively compared.
Not through primal pack-instinct this herding;
Rather formally than socially inspired.
So familiar faces mingle among strangers,
With colleagues sprouting spouses at their sides,
Names are dropped like curtsies, for their impact,
Jewellery weighed and accents analysed.
Yet all at once our coats, so thinly varnished,
Primitively bristle, give off scent,
Our vital hackles rise to the occasion:
We are simply sniffing bottoms in the end!

poem © Celia Warren 2013

The picture (taken in Paignton, Devon) is new. The poem I wrote 20 years ago, but it's as valid today as ever, I think.