Paradise Tours
For want of anything better to do,
I pick up the brochure that arrived
with the other junk mail. Flick through
its white sand beaches, sea of Giotto blue,
tables laden with carafes of wine,
platters piled high with fruits de mer.
Radiant faces beam out at me,
and in one photo, a man, a dead ringer
for my late father, sprawls blissfully naked
under what could be a pomegranate tree.
Smudged print has made all details illegible,
all that can be deciphered by the potential
traveller is the firm's name, 'Paradise Tours'
and 'Frequent Flights'.
Stephen Bone
If you have any thoughts about this
poem, Stephen
Bone would like to hear them
