Coincidentally

Just a pub, in the middle of nowhere

we shouldn’t even have been there,

a hastily reorganised second choice

having been let down, last minute.

Then the slightly bo-ho woman,

ordinary enough, I suppose

nursing a G&T, reading a scruffy paperback

dog asleep under the table,

it was the dog that caught your eye,

Glen of Imaal Terrier, rare-ish now

spitting image of Rosie, our last, gone ten years.

The woman looked up and she knew, you knew

as you beckoned me over,

his name was Stanley and the story unfolded,

her mother-in-law had Imaals first

from breeder’s in Northamptonshire

and I though you would faint

as you grabbed my arm looking stunned,

her first pup was named Spud, the whole litter

named after potatoes.

Then you couldn’t wait to tell her

that Rosie’s pedigree name was Cara,

Spud had been a sibling

as the colour returned to your cheeks

thoughts turning to breeders Bob and Jane

dear friends, both dying recently

a mere eighteen months apart, and

how they would have been tickled pink

to hear about this coincidental meeting

but we couldn’t tell them.

We both felt peculiar on the way home

happy, sad, bittersweet, tearful

all down to Stanley, Rosie and Spud

and the lady in the second-choice pub

reading the Celestine Prophecy.

Published by grahamrsherwood