Hi Colin,
What an experience! I think I'd title the piece simply 'stench', don't think
it needs the longer description at that point.
Cheers,
Frank
> It Was Not Easy to Ignore the Stench
>
> It was not easy to ignore the mephitic stench
> as it wafted across the lawn-
> the unmistakable smell of rotting flesh-
> guessed at corpse of cat or dog
> hidden in undergrowth.
> We hoped to dig it out and move it on,
> but the summer tangle was too dense -
> not stick nor spade could find the putrid place.
>
> Flies buzzed and assailed our senses,
> lay like eyes on the bushes,
> but never showed the way.
> So we turned back
> to the short grass of the lawn,
> buried our faces in roses,
> made jokes about the smell.
> Someone said it must be a dead rabbit
> and someone else that it could be a mouse.
>
> We only talked of crawling under bushes
> all the way to the hedge,
> explored without success,
> expressed bewilderment
> and said that the smell was declining,
> that whatever it was
> the maggots and sextons would have it soon.
> We drank orange juice
> and talked of other things all summer,
> played with the baby as it learnt to crawl,
> remarked that the flowers this year
> were better than ever before.
>
> What might have lain there
> we knew only in dreams,
> in the lingering dread of days gone by.
> We tried to forget the foetid wind
> pressing the glass at night,
> the peeling paint at the window's edge.
> We never looked beyond the hedge
> till one more curious than the rest
> ventured and found at last
> what none had ever wished to find,
> the tattered clothes and ribs that would not disappear,
> organs liquefying into the ground,
> a skull exposed in parts with grinning teeth,
> the remains of a face, missing for half a year.
>
>
> ________________________________________
>
> Title?
>
>
>
> Colin
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