Relationships

"Well, what do you work at?" she said to me after about
six months
Of what a mutual journalist friend was pleased to call our
"relationship".
"I'm a lion tamer", I replied, as off-handedly as possible,
Hoping she'd say: "Are you really?"
Instead she said: "I don't believe you."
So I jumped up from my chair and I strode across the room
(Stumbling over a wickerwork magazine rack),
I knelt on one knee at her feet and gazed up at her:
Slowly she edged away from me and backed out of the door
And glancing out of the window I saw her bounding down the road,
Her fair hair gleaming in the wind, her crimson voice growling.

Paul Durcan