It's Still Life

There’s a soft, ample-sized woman, 
who lives next to the old Norman church. 
She’s the landlady at the Frog’s Hole pub,

where neighbours wage eternal war 
on Friday and Saturday nights. 

Stop shovelling your snow on my roses, howls the recently widowed Joan, she’s leaning from her bedroom window. Shut up and go away, snaps the man next door who wears shorts in December. 

But the soft ample-sized woman 
keeps the peace, and demands 
a civil tongue from all, all except 

her African grey parrot.

The parrot is named Suki Tawdry. 
It named itself, should you wonder,
a privilege reserved for rockstars.

Suki flew out the door once, kept 
flying until it reached the coast. 
Half a block away. 

It sat on the beach, watched the sunset, 
chatted up a gull, hopped on a taxi home.

Anyway, the ample-sized woman … 
she has a sweet singing voice, like 
a flute made out of sugarcane, but 

Suki mistakes that sound for a door 
with a mingin’ screechin’ hinge, and 
flies out the door for the beach

every single time,
because The Frog’s Hole pub’s 
door is always open. 

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AI Digital Art: created using Midjourney’s bot (v4b) Image and poem ©Misky 2022 Shared on Twitter #amwriting