Casablanca

You must remember this

To fall in love in Casablanca

To be the champion of Morocco.

The size of tuppence

Photographs show Uncle Bill holding silver cups

Wearing sepia silks and a George Formby grin.

Dominique

Had silent film star looks. With brown eyes

Black hair and lips full to the brim, she was a race apart.

He brought her over

To meet the family early on. An exotic bloom

In bleak post-war Bootle. Just the once.

Had there been children

There might have been more contact. But letters,

Like silver cups, were few and far between.

At seventy-eight

It’s still the same old story. Widowed and lonely

The prodigal sold up and came back home.

I met him that first Christmas

He spoke in broken scouse. Apart from that

He looked like any other bow-legged pensioner.

He had forgotten the jockey part

The fight for love and glory had been a brief episode

In a long, and seemingly, boring life.

It turned out

He had never felt at home there

Not a week went by without him thinking of Liverpool.

Casablanca

The airplane on the runway. She in his arms.

Fog rolling in from the Mersey. As time goes by.