Akushla Dockery* (Is Vic There?)

Late on a midweek night ,
before the nighthawks hit the diner,
Vic’s there – belly-up,
elbows down in the puddled suds
in answer to a long ago question
still found on the antique
musical box in the corner.

Outside, the joke pub name,
has long gone over
strangers’ heads.
- A Pain in the Erse.

Billy Dockery?
Whoever heard of a Catholic William?
Plenty – mostly those whose heads
Billy cracked open
when they made something of it.
Regulars explain the pub name
to tourists, mostly American,
sometimes ‘Bankies’ mistaken
for ‘Glaswegians’.

But they don’t come to fight.

Vic is still there,
he used to come
to moon over the Landlord’s daughter,
water under the bridge
since then has pooled in murky puddles
down on Memory Lane.
The beauty is long gone
but the beast remains,
just like Vic.

‘I’m going to London’ she smiled.
‘Kilburn. I’ve a cousin.
You could visit. It’s the actin’
I’ll be doin’. When I get the card
I’ll need another name’.

And he asked her what it would be.
Like Father, like daughter
the last thing she said to him
was supposed to be funny.
‘It’ll be Akushla Dockery,
up in lights, Victor, you’ll see.’

And for as long as Vic doesn't go,
it might just one day be.

*Akushla Dockery - linguistic pun on an Irish expression whose aspect I have changed.