Apologies if this is a repeat . I have been finding quite a few of my
messages via JISCmail have been vanishing without trace.
The problem, I'm told, is that JISCmail may reject a message if you include
the original header in the text, as it assumes that it is a repeated email.
So this time, I deleted the header.
Dear Sally,
My feeling about this is that it could be trimmed quite a bit, and that it
comes across as too bluntly moralistic. I felt it was an updating of the
fable about the grasshopper and the ants.
The second verse doesn't work in its present form for me, with its
catalogue of problems- feels too prosey. Also I didn't feel the repeat of
cups,marmalade, tea added much to the poem.
Apologies if this all sounds very negative. I liked the first verse very
much -you could almost end the poem before the second stanza, with awoke,
and have a short poem that is very life-affirming.
Kind regards
grasshopper
Line: After the cups, the marmalade, the tea
FEEDING THE BIRDS
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea
she put the other kitchen things away
and went outside to feed the birds. A robin
strutted, proprietor of an urn. Crows, crowded
on village housetops, watched disdainfully.
Sparrows and chaffinches began to fly
down from the outer apple trees. She threw
crumbs and poppy-seeds of bread to them,
cheese-parings, crust and rind. Around the grass,
soft, wet and ordinary, heaps of ivy,
recently stripped from the old buildings,
lay piecemeal in untidy remnants,
where here and there an early snowdrop spear
clearing the level of the lawn, awoke.
A girl the woman knew came by the gate
among the birds, and told her sorry tale.
She'd gone to see her dying father,
and while she was away, failed to sign on
and now her money had been stopped. She'd eaten
only a bag of christmas oranges
for nearly a week. They=B9d offered her a job
dry-stone walling, despite her doctor=B9s line
saying she was pregnant. Then her father died.
Then they gave her a cheque she couldn=B9t cash =AD
no bank account. She'd had a miscarriage
up at the cottage, brought about perhaps
by worry and starvation.
So the woman
took the girl indoors into the kitchen,
among the pots, the cups, the marmalade,
the tea, and shoved a pan at her, and said,
Eat this, cook this, and put this in your pocket,
and packed some groceries for her, remarking,
We've learned this: always keep a store of food,
your cupboards, freezer, tins and apples,
and use your larder for its proper purpose,
to share it with your fellows when they need it.
The cups, the marmalade, the tea are not
for nothing; there's a kitchen in the life
of everyone. The girl ate hungrily
and talked as needfully, then went away,
wandering like the birds, and left the woman
taking the measure of her morning's work
among the cups, the marmalade, the tea.
Sally Evans
(Q: Do Americans know our usage 'sign on', - followed by 'They' which is
universally understood in UK? )
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