Selections from Bob’s PRIVATE VERSES published 2009

Advice to my Son on Seeing Him with Needle and Thread and Shorts

Sew up your flies, my son,

Sew up your flies.

That way you will be treated as harmless.

They don’t understand that

Love will find a way,

If necessary, without the conventional

Exit.

     Bormes-les-Mimosas   24 August 1988

Tony Hewson in his Preface to Private verses comments that it is ‘a brave father who dares to give advice to his son!’

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 Splashes in the Pond

‘It’s fucking frogs,’ she said.

She was not swearing.

Some four dozen pairs of frogs

Were having intercourse

With some difficulty

Since the shallow pond water

Early in the morning

Was attempting to freeze.

Early in the evening

They were still at it,

The lads squeezing with all their loving might

And the lasses obliging with eggs aplenty.

Soon the pond was a pulsating jelly

Packed with spawn in their protective gelatine.

What abundance! What generosity! What a harvest!

Then the four goldfish found them

And the ducks arrived.

It’s nature’s way,

They say.

   Gutherscale 7 March 2005

With thanks to our friend, Hilary Northcroft, whose specialist knowledge helped us to be precise about the activity in the pond.

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That’s Life!

Aunt Emmie died on the lavatory –

The outside lavatory at the top of her garden path.

I do not know how long she sat there before she died

Or whether or not her death was hurried on perhaps

By constipation. And I do not know

How long she sat there after she had died

Or even whether or not she continued

To sit there or just fell off

If there was room – which probably there was not.

Was it winter, spring or summer?

Did big Uncle Frank eventually struggle up the garden

And discover her there, dead?

Was he first cross, or sorry?

He once, I had heard, told a judge in the court

‘I love her so much I could have eaten her –

And sometimes I wish I bloody well had!’

Their separation was called off.

Then, after all, she went

And died on the outside lavatory.

I really liked

Aunt Emmie

     Gutherscale  11 April 2003

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Observation 8

I was once told

That a son had telephoned his father

At ten o’clock in the morning.

His father grumbled that he was in bed.

‘What are you doing in bed,

at ten o’clock,on a lovely morning?’

‘Practising dying,’

His father retorted.

     Pimlico  24 May 2009

   Roy Oxlade, Luke John’s father and our great friend died 15 February 2014

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Night Noises

I like girls who like night noises,

Girls who would not have minded

How much Hercules grunted,

Or Samson snored,

Or Ulysses broke wind,

Or Ovid recited in his sleep,

So long as they could share their bed

And know that they were

In a living sleep.

And you, girl of my dreams,

Remember what noises we made

Day and night we made,

We made,

We made.

     Long Crendon  14 October 1994

  We are indebted to our friend of many years, Rose Wylie, for the expression ‘Night Noises’.

Observation 3

The great difference

Between arriving

And departing

Is

You do not know

That you are going to be born

You can’t get out of it

And you can’t get ready for it.

But you do know

You’re going to die.

Can you get ready for it?

You can’t get out of it.

For archive footage of Bob reading selections from Private Verses go to:

youtube.com PRIVATE VERSES.m4v Bob Fowler