Waterlog

Waterlog.

The rain has begun.

I park the car close as possible, then dodging the drops, duck into the library.

“Ahh,” says the librarian, “we’ve been wading through your requests and look what’s washed up.”

It is like Santa handing over a present.

“Ahh, ‘Waterlog’”, I say.”The perfect book to read in the bath,”

“Just don’t drop it,” he says.

I should have seen that coming but Steve is quick, very quick.

“Thanks,” I say and we have a brief chat on the merits of reading in strange places, like baths.

“Have to go”, I say. “The rain’s getting heavier.”

By the time I get to the car, the book and I are waterlogged.

Steve would have appreciated that pun.

Now I don’t have to worry about dropping it in the bath.

* what’s the strangest place you’ve read a book?

You Don’t Get Asked That Too Often

She wants to hear some of my poems.

You don’t get asked that too often.

So I choose the bright ones, the buoyant ones,

the ones with a lot of bounce.

She loves ‘The Wrong Saint’

the one about getting lost on our way back from the winery

and praying to St. Francis, instead of St. Christopher,

the patron saint of travellers.

No wonder we were getting lost.

We were praying to the wrong guy.

She loves Quilton too, that one I posted,

an early Covid poem,, Quilton Loves Your Bum’

with all its jackanapery.

I used to read to her as a child,

little stories I made up,

and now I’m reading to her again,

my little story poems,

at the age of 18.

my grand-daughter, Grace.

And she still loves what I write.

Can I stop now, I ask,

a little exhausted.

It’s good to have a fan.

Rear View

There’s a cobweb on the rear view mirror

of my car,

the outside one so it’s a little mussed up

as you’d expect

in all that turbulence.

A new one goes up every second or third day.

I don’t know what he catches in it

except the past..

Like a passenger facing the wrong way

on a long distance train

he only sees where he’s been.

Maybe there’s a value in that:.

looking back.

A little nostalgia does no harm.

In fact we revel in it:

costume dramas, westerns like ‘Yellowstone’,

origin stories of super heroes,

biopics,

the little cobwebs studios weave

to hold our interest.

If you go looking for me

If you go looking for me sometime after dark

I’m out with my flashlight, hunting for a snark,

a perfect metaphor for an imperfect poem

so I can bag it briskly and bring it home,

a perfect metaphor, so rare and so apt

that captures the mood, the Magnificat

of the vision splendid I hope to impart,

the perfect, perfect metaphor somewhere in the dark.

Baths

a boat shaped vessel with room for one

when you clamber into a bath you are captain, crew, passenger

rolled into one

yet baths require no special skills

nor do they stand on ceremony; in this they are like some beaches:

dress is entirely optional

entering a bath you enter a topsy-turvy world where water fills the craft

not surrounds it — though baths will never sink

head back, you settle down but are going nowhere: baths have no destinations nor sails

yet people have been known to drift off in baths emerging rosy-skinned

and luminous as if fresh from a voyage

*pic courtesy of Pinterest

Max and the Great Big Grin

This is Max.

The birthday boy.

He was 10 years old the other day.

Say happy birthday to Max.

He’s my grand-daughter’s dog.

A lovely, well behaved Labrador.

But recently Max did a Houdini.

Somehow he got out and went for a wander.

When my grand-daughter got home she looked everywhere and began to get anxious. Max has ID on his collar but their house abuts an 80 k zone.

Then a woman phoned.

Your dog is in my backyard, she said. He’s fine.

When she picked Max up he had a great big grin on his face.

What you been up to, Max? she asked.

But Max kept mum.

It must have been good because Max slept very soundly that night and that great big grin was still on his face.

The Woman in the Glove Box

It is time to bring out the woman in the glove box again.

There are no gloves in there.

But there is Olive,

Quirky , off-kilter as this blog which is perhaps why I like her.

I like her feistiness too,

How she tells her husband,

“Stop shouting! Do you think that makes you a man?”

“All men need to be told this,” my partner tells me

Who likes Olive too.

She is getting the new book, the sequel, when it comes out.

But she is not like Olive.

Olive has a big personality and is not backward in coming forward,

As my mother used to say.

She is curious but curiously vulnerable.

She is the engine of the novel, the fuel, the vehicle

That takes you there.

She waits in the glove box like a car in a garage.

 

* have you a favourite fictional character?

* what do you admire in them?

Beast

There was a man in our street who had an apparition in the middle of an afternoon.

 

He was driving on a country road where on a whim he took a detour. His wife was beside him. They drove down the avenues and streets and occasional crescents till they realised they were caught in an infinity loop. The man began to panic. It was like that time he was stuck in a lift. He could feel his heart fibrillating, his bladder wanting to burst, his vision blurring but he held this from his wife who would accuse him of weakness.

 

That’s when he saw it, the apparition. It came for him, lumbering down some labyrinth in his brain, a Minotaur bristly and bellowing, big as a tank, barging into him. His heart stopped.

 

His wife never knew what happened but she found her way out.

 

 

 

Beach Balls, Rabbits & Heads

You haven’t got your head up your arse

Or in the clouds any more, he said,

But firmly secured where it should be.

Atop my shoulders? I suggested.

But my big brother was right.

I was a dreamy kid but when the hormones kicked in— boy!!

My head was every which way but loose.

It was like a beach ball bobbing along

On choppy waves,

A dog chasing after every rabbit which crossed

its path.

I’m still a bit like that but the hormones

Are quieter now

& if I don’t watch it I still find myself

Head up the arse or in the clouds,

A head’s gotta go somewhere.

Waterlogged

The rain has begun.

I park the car close as possible, then dodging the drops, duck into the library.

“Ahh,” says the librarian, “we’ve been wading through your requests and look what’s washed up.”

It is like Santa handing over a present.

“Ahh, ‘Waterlog’”, I say.”The perfect book to read in the bath,”

“Just don’t drop it,” he says.

I should have seen that coming but Steve is quick, very quick.

“Thanks,” I say and we have a brief chat on the merits of reading in strange places, like baths.

“Have to go”, I say. “The rain’s getting heavier.”

By the time I get to the car, the book and I are waterlogged.

Steve would have appreciated that pun.

Now I don’t have to worry about dropping it in the bath.