For Heather
On Christmas morning,
they huddled round the tree.
Presents formed a polka-dotted and snowflaked metropolis.
Colin ate his chocolate buttons one by one,
holding each one up to the light
as if valuing a horde of Roman coins.
Doris, Colin's wife of twenty-one years,
ripped open the prezzie marked:
'To my darling wife, Doris x x x'
Inside the box was the whole of Rhodesia.
There were zebras, baboons,
some water monitors,
lots of jungle, some Zimbabwean guerillas.
Still in her nighty, she looked up at her husband, shocked,
but he was struggling to put the batteries
into his new sat nav, and took no notice.
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