This week’s poem celebrates a mature but immature love affair. I have chosen it for Rachel, the lady who has a special place in my heart.
Push around my chromed Bath Chair
Let me tease your white chest hair
Scaring children, swapping dentures
Let us have some great adventures
- Bee Rawlinson (—)
Poem 418. Untitled
Love me when I’m old and shocking
Peel off my elastic stockings
Swing me from the chandeliers
Let’s be randy bad old dears.
Push around my chromed Bath Chair
Let me tease your white chest hair
Scaring children, swapping dentures
Let us have some great adventures
Take me to the Dogs and Bingo
Teach me how to speak the lingo
Bone my eels and bring me tea
Show me how it’s meant to be
Take me to your special places
Watching all the puzzled faces
You in shorts and socks and sandals
Me with warts and huge love-handles
As the need for love enthralls
Wrestle with my damp proof smalls
Make me laugh without constraint
Buy me chocolate body paint
Hold me safe throughout the night
When my hair has turned to white
Believe me when I say it’s true
I’ve waited all my life for you
This poem is about a love affair, but rather than the intense but sometimes superficial affairs of youth, it takes a comedic but affectionate look at how a love affair might evolve once the lovers have passed their first flush of youth.
All the stock images associated with the elderly: elastic stockings, bath chairs, dentures, and so on are contrasted with the things we might think were the province of love in our younger days. Rawlinson reminds us that growing old doesn’t mean we have to become staid or stodgy—in two lines, we move from elastic stockings to swinging off the chandeliers…
I like it because it is funny but it reminds us that passion is not the sole province of the young and even those getting on in years can have their moments. It reminds me of Victoria Wood’s Ballad of Barry and Freda and also of Jenny Joseph’s Warning.
It is quite popular on wedding websites as a suggested reading but there don’t seem to be any performances on YouTube. I have also been unable to find any information about Bee Rawlinson herself other than that she is “a popular contemporary poet and author”.