Rover 90, and other pleasures of Pic’s peanut butter

I love Pic’s peanut butter. As a lover of jars, I love how easy it is to remove their labels. I love that so many of my homemade jams (etc) are now adorned with bright red stars on their reused-jar lids.

The last Pic’s label I peeled off had a poem on it so good I’ve been keeping said label around for weeks, trying to keep it from sticking to everything I accidentally get near it.

Time to transcribe so I can finally throw this gluey label away. I hope you’ll enjoy this as much as I do.

Rover 90

Once I met a girl who owned a Rover.
Older than me, could barely reach
the clutch. Hair as fine as cobweb;
a piece missing from one of her fingers.

The Rover ran on five. In spring
she let me under the bonnet.
I ground the valves in, and we drove
on six all summer. Running like a dream.

By autumn, the engine was blowing smoke,
the girl was pregnant. By the side
of the road out of Tapu it died,
the Rover, the girl, the baby, and I.

-Bill Smith
‘The Poet Who Writes for Peanuts!’

I really FEEL this one, you know? Tapu is just 25 minutes up the road from us. The whole scene reminds me of my old Holden Gemini, and associated adventures in Tasmania in 1998. “…serious pieces worthy of a darkened corner, a glass of wine and perhaps a box of tissues” indeed. Thanks, Pic’s.