THE FISHING BRIDGE

You and me and some other felucca,
Floating, grammatically precariously, down the Nile,
Me taking holy day snaps,
You, a pink rosebud, curled and naked,
Peeping with piggy eyes at the sun’s dazzle.
Were you for once maybe nearly happy,
Almost not too desperately pathetic,
Perhaps even smug?
I was snap happy,
Catching the sisters, Mimi, Fifi, Fatima and little Lolita
Suzie Wong and Laura with the aura,
Hopping about the deck
In their pretty black and white bikinis,
All saints bless them!,
When some crafty thieving Theban fishing from a bridge,
Managed to hook your other pink pig’s ear,
The ear your mother had not nipped.
Suddenly you were an angler’s dangler.
You were the squealing fish that no one expected to catch.
Was there nun to help you?
Only bouncing bikini clad Saint Mimi, bless her,
Captain of the netball team,
Leaping for your rubber bum, saving your bacon.
From its ascension into oven.
How we saints all laughed!
But you were pained.
You were terribly, terribly hurt.
You were no longer nearly so nearly happy.

Believe me Piggles,
When, in the course of time,
I found myself looking down on your very
Dead
Carcase,
Many
Tears fell upon those ugly
Tears
In your dead, deaf pig’s
Ears.