Uncle Phil's Limo
He was beetling from an accident
with a crumpled Morris Minor on his back
when he saw, bow-black on the neck of the sky,
a V8 Ford Pilot 1936 Saloon, volunteered
as a chicken run.
He had a dream, did Phil, which came and went,
where he would find a pleasurable wreck
of a touring car and do it up. To prize.
Now here was this fabulous child come near.
His promised one.
The hand-brake worked, though with its back bent,
on the gentle slope of grass beyond the hayrack.
But, inside the silhouette, had the engine dried
in the magpie wind, immune to Time's jackdaw,
safely cocooned?
Getting the bonnet released was a torment,
the cracking of a black egg, brittle shellac
spitting at the dandelions, leaving pied
beauty where car paint ceased to cohere,
but was the engine gone?
No, it was all still there. The casement
showroom-fresh, new as a tumbling chick,
the eight great cylinders complied
at the turn of the cam. One thing was clear,
bargaining would not be fun.
Men of Kent will pour your beer, then charge rent
on the glass. You'll hear the purse begin to click
and you'll know he knows you lied
about 'the steering wouldn't steer'.
And then there's the farmer's gun.
Phil told him straight he'd seen the evidence.
The sow's ear that had once been a gold brick
could still be purring cross country, he said.
Oh, and the chickens could have a Ford Grenadier.
Deal done.
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- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
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- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
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- Yellow Crane, The