Monopoly - Tuesday Poem

Monopoly

This kind of day years ago

we’d break out Monopoly

cheap wine and chips

and later, gentled with booze,

we might make soup together

while the kids told silly stories

the tantrums over Whitehall  ̶

and all your hotels – washed away

in the bedtime bath.

I wonder, writing this,

whether you hear set-in rain

and think of those Monopoly afternoons,

that always ended in our daughter’s tears.

We, all of us, live with different people now.

The dog’s the only constant –

and she sleeps through most day

paws scurrying her through dream paddocks.

Today I felt the same sad I felt back then,

when everythingfell slowly apart 

until we stretchedout on the loungeroom floor,

arguing over who got the top hat

who the shoe and you looked over their heads

at me and threw the dice.

Catherine Bateson, 2013.

I would say that summer is pretty well over in Melbourne - of course, this being Melbourne, we can still be surprised! I was trying to avoid a 'winter is coming' kind of joke  - there - I've done it for you. Relieved? Warm yourself on some poetic fire over at the Tuesday Poem Hub - where you can witness the third blog birthday communal poem being written. From the hub, you can skive off and find other poems -  cosy, fired-up, and flaming!