Hour Twenty-three – Pick the title of a book that you love. That title is now the title of the poem. That poem can be about the book directly, or indirectly, or it can use the title as a jumping off point and be about something else entirely.

 

 

Not the Man Called Ove

 

He was nothing like Ove, my dad.

He was never grumpy.

Handsome, uniformed, sometimes frumpy.

Ove would not get his Scotland and England mixed up.

Or prefer his tea in a handled, saucered cup.

Dad did. He often did.

 

His first visit here then.

Expecting men in white

at an oval green.

Heck, he expected to see the queen

stroll around with Bertie and Jeeves.

Instead, he marvelled at coos, gorse and fallen leaves.

 

He spoke to the local village shop lady

in his best fake Oxfordshire English.

He did the same when he went to get chips ‘n fish.

‘Dad, this is Glasgow, we don’t do posh here.’

(I almost said dinnae there,

you can’t live here and not speak some local).

 

Back in his own land, he introduced me as his

‘Daughter from England.’

Twinkling at my fury, he would

tease, with old familiar ease.

And make up a song about a posh Macintosh.

Ove would not do that. Oh gosh, no.

 

Ove had more gravitas.

 

But they twinkled the same.

These two darling men.