Hi Nancy,
There's been so many posts on the list about poetry it seems to have 
squeezed the poems to the edge for a few days... and I'm sorry I almost 
missed re-reading your poem!
But I'm glad I didn't. On these grey-wet hereabouts-dank empty-suburban days 
I'm enduring, it's a joy to read what you've wrote. Oh the laziness, the 
indolence, the langour of it!
Then the final phrasing of the poem "just one more step, or maybe two, away 
from resolution." - which I assume, because of where the comma is, must be 
the day that's moving away (or is it the singing? cos that changes the whole 
tenor of the poem for me?) is - either way/either meaning - a fine end for a 
fine poem. (Which is it?)
Bob






>From: Nancy Gandhi <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Sub:  Summer Afternoon
>Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 13:25:35 +0530
>
>Okay, here goes:
>Nancy
>
>    Summer Afternoon
>
>Flies land and take off from my knee,
>run aground and sweating
>in a bright gul mohur’s shade.
>
>It’s too hot to swat them,
>too hot to think Tamil,
>talk vegetables with the cook,
>understand the maid’s tale
>of disaster on the roof.
>Our mouths open and shut.
>Decisions must be made.
>I’m dull as the red-jowled chameleon
>doing pushups on a branch.
>
>The gardener’s broom swishes
>underneath a neighbour’s singing lesson:
>An exactly quavered line repeated
>in a fainter, younger voice.
>Each phrase ends on a higher note
>like the slowly seeping day,
>just one more step, or maybe two, away
>from resolution.
>
>Nancy Gandhi


_________________________________________________________________
Help STOP SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE*  
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail