Magnolia's face always showed some surprise.
She looked at the world all around with wide eyes.
Images danced and they filled her with wonder.
Each thing had the drama of lightning and thunder.

The postman was always aspiring to give her
Beautiful letters. Each day he'd deliver
Buttercups into her letter box with
Circulars brimming with bull rhymes-with-bit.

The milkman sang songs, sweet notes from his mouth.
Powerful harmonious voices drowned out
The sound of the truck that emptied her bin.
But she disappointed each one of these men.

She married an Arctic explorer who'd lost
Two fingers, three toes and his head to the frost.
In place of his head, he had a balloon.
Sometimes it deflated and whistled a tune.

He wore a mask of Gregory Peck.
A fine hearty laugh still emerged from his neck.
They met by the coast and they'd married in months.
They had fourteen children but not all at once.

Three came together, and two sets of twins.
All were delivered with sparkling wide grins.
Sometimes they fought and they screamed and they cursed,
And made such a racket their father's head burst.

But always they lived in a household of love.
Despite his balloon he felt blessed from above.
He helped all the kids make a fourteen-man sled,
And cold winter air filled his feather-light head.

It flooded his mind with familiar old dreams
Of travelling lands where the once trickling streams
Are frozen in ice for most of the year,
Blocked off from people by fences of fear.

So with all the children, his wife and the cat,
He set foot on mystery's worn welcome mat.
They journeyed by boat instead of a flight,
A train through the snow-covered land late at night,

A chain of gold lights full of vodka-soaked voices,
Warm joyous accents that hid a deep crisis.
They went to the Arctic. They all felt elation
On leaving the civilised world at the station.

They met little people who lived in the ground
And loved the deeply melodious sound
Of the cold Arctic wind sung from nature's great mouth.
The little folk there never ventured far south.

Some wore peaked caps with initials 'BC'.
One had a T-shirt with 'I shot E.T.'.
They could use magic to make them invisible,
Or unveil a beautiful librarian called Isobel

Who spoke at great length on the merits of Joyce.
His luminous words were adored by her mice.
Before she moved on to her treatise on Beckett.
She suddenly vanished. They heard her say 'feck it'.

The small folk conferred and then one of them said
They'd make Magnolia's husband a head.
They made it from snow. They sculpted a nose,
Two ears and a mouth that could form perfect prose.

The startling black eyes were just two lumps of coal.
They cut his snow hair with the help of a bowl.
He wasn't as handsome as Gregory Peck,
But for this new head he wrote them a cheque,

A six figure sum. He insisted they take it.
They told him his head would last years, but don't bake it.
His two working eyes filled his head with new sights.
The one of his wife could light thousands of nights.

Before, in his mind, she had been just a blur.
He saw why the postman and most men loved her.
The kids all made snowmen that followed them home,
Via Vienna, Helsinki and Rome.