Saddle Bags and Coolie Hats

 

Saddle Bags and Coolie Hats

 

He’s back and you’re the clothes horsey horsey,

here’s his pole and a line running at angles of high hat

with a touch of traditional coolie in red

and hard-working legs akimbo on that old marital bed

or saddled with saddlebags at least,

rubbing floured bread in plenty of soured yeast,

a disappointment in risen dough and not much baguette,

but take a role, any role, sou sou west of drole,

cued off course and left of down stage centre,

spread butter Marmite and she does repent her

haste them to the airplane steps bestrewn with blooms,

a cool aloha and lei and she’s seen some better days

he might be thinking, looks her up and down and drinking,

licks complimentary matchstick open pink cocktail umbrella,

lacks guts or doesn’t have the heart to tell her

we’re widening our horizons by closing them off,

you’re sucking straws and I’m clutching cloth,

and glad with the diversion of that persistent moth

who hurls herself at candles, cannons off naked lights,

falls finally into your saddle bags, a crisp amongst the litter

of books hawking things living longer, living fitter,

tangerine liver, tubes of lubricant, anti-aging cream,

hot gossip, hot topics, and endless conversational streams

of absent friends and whence does it lie, this lost dream?

While she says to me, am I not beautiful,

you did not tell me so, not today, so puts foot on the gas,

and won’t wave in remembrance while driving past.