On Screen One the Ducks are challenging the Black Hawks
on ice, while Pacific Hold-em Poker is dealing a hand
on Screen Two, and Cat Stevens is shadowing the moon
on the music track and Venus Williams is being thrashed
on Screen Three by a young tennis hopeful from Florida.
Behind the bar the girl is telling a customer about
a relationship with an Ex who threatened her children
and the new boyfriend who’s afraid of commitment.

Outside, northern night is closing down the harbour
as the last seaplane skitters to a pontoon.
I eat my fries in a bubble of silence.
Black Hawks five, Ducks two, the hand to beat
is a straight flush, Williams is forty love down
and the girl behind the bar is still waiting for it.

Kathleen is a poet and biographer living in the north of England.  She has a couple of pamphlets published by Redbeck Press, a full collection with Templar Poetry, and is now working towards her second collection which features poems written while travelling among the First Nation people of British Columbia.