Stout

Stout Victorians brewed, and consigned

To the seabed, is divers’ new find.

One is tempted to drink

Up at once, but I think

That I’ll let you go first … Do you mind?

 

Mike Mesterton-Gibbons is a Professor Emeritus at Florida State University who has returned to live in his native England. His poems have appeared in Current Conservation, the Ekphrastic Review, Light, Lighten Up Online, the New Verse News, Oddball Magazine, Rat’s Ass Review, WestWard Quarterly and other journals. In 2025 he won the Children’s Unpublished category of the Eyelands Book Awards with Flora’s Flock and Other Stories to Read Aloud. The poem was prompted by the BBC story “Divers find 162-year-old Guinness in shipwreck off the English coast.”