Drinking Tale
Whether Bonnie Prince Charlie actually drank from it
we'll never know.
"It could be apocryphal."
my father began the story
that his father and his mother's father told.
At least it's old.
1737 is the date on what looks like a label,
moulded from the cave-green glass of the bottle.
What struggle to blow it
shows in the thickness and the shape,
less round than an oval sagged by its weight.
Artefacts. Where do they end?
This is a piece of bark
from a tree in a wood
that John Bull once looked at,
allegedly.
Through the opening,
much dust on the summit
of the generous false bottom.
About a quart of air.
Is it all?
No message, clear as my grandmothers'
"Things are seldom as they seem"?
Has it a Jacobean genie?
Shall I lift it in anger,
find bloody finger prints
and rub till the glass glows warm in my hand?
We need a bigger house.
Dolls wave from the bookcase
and my son billets bey-blades in the dresser.
He remembers them all: Black Dronzer, Survival Wolf, Dragoon.
Space is the thing.
but I can't just drop this vessel in the bank for old bottles.
Much easier to pass it on when the time comes
with familiar words in passing.
Colin
QUESTION:
Is S5, the bit about artefacts an irritating distraction or welcome humour?
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