I like this Colin. I do think S5 like you say s a distraction though. I like
old bottles the way they are blown and so much history wondering who drank
from it what the ale or wine tasted like in those days. Bw Sally J

>From: Colin dewar <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: newsub/tale
>Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2004 21:51:25 -0000
>
>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?