The Cruise Poem by Martin Knebel

Lately widowed Mary Jenkins
Looked the brochures through-
A cruise to the Antipodes,
Blue skies, the sea and pastures new.
A chance to make new friendships, leave the past
And see a world she'd never known, at last!
Her husband left a ‘‘packet’’ she could spend,
He'd worked the fish and chip shop to the end.

So came the day and the ship's siren hooting;
The luxury, the glamour far from Tooting.
Her chance to wear her new bikini, blue;
Her evening dress with matching jewellery too;
And would she dare to wear that cocktail dress,
So short and cut so low she did confess.

As it turned out there was one man to choose
For twenty-seven women on that cruise:
A widower named Bert, on the wrong side of fifty,
An ex-policeman, pleasant, but perhaps a little shifty.

There’s nothing so romantic as a cruise:
The drink flows freely. Why not?
The band is playing and the stars are bright.
Why not step out and grasp what is your right?

So Mary Jenkins set her cap at ex-chief super Bert
And twenty-six competing women felt the hurt.
For much to her delight and her surprise
She’d won him fair
The first and only cruising prize.

The captain quickly made them man and wife
As they set forth by sea and later land
To this new life

And for twenty years at night she stayed awake
Pondering what had been a very serious mistake.