Hi Frank,
         Thanks for your comments. This one is not to be taken too seriously, it´s just a bit of silliness inspired by some reactions to an earlier posting in which a stream featured. I´m sure, though, that the inconsistencies are all in the writing.



Best wishes,   Mike




--- Alkuperäinen viesti ---
hmmmm, mike - it didn't laugh, but it did feel merry. Wells were 'clammy as
a cold hand on the heart ...'.

I don't know mike, others have talked about the wit of this piece, and fair
enough, because it is, but I see a fair bit of inconsistency and it lost me
before I got too far into it. It'll be a limitation in my reading, I
suspect, rather than the poem itself. Just thought it may be useful to let
you know.

Cheers,

Frank



The Stream

Once upon a time there was this stream
that was just a stream and didn´t symbolise anything.
It flowed through a wood
but it didn´t sing because streams don´t do that.
However, it flowed along feeling quite merry.
In places where it was shallow
the stream rippled and splashed, refracting sunlight.
In other places it ran deep and smooth
and in some places it ran underground.
These were good locations for a well,
of which there were many,
but the air was as damp and clammy
as a cold hand on the heart in these shaded corners.

One day the stream flowed past a `he´
who was not Narcissus and didn´t symbolise
anything more surprising than his own self.
We´ll call him Nark because that was his name.
On this day Nark was employed
in dipping bare feet in the stream.
He had a pile of these feet on the bank beside him
because collecting bare feet was a hobby of his.
He cut these feet from the legs of unwary travellers
in the wood, especially psychologists
because Nark strongly opposed all forms of analysis.
Whenever he cut off a psychologist´s foot
he awarded himself ten points.
The foot symbolised his father. Nark had a lot of points.

Sometimes when Nark was thirsty he drank from the stream.
But recently he had started creeping off
to one of the wells to slake his thirst from a furtive bucket.

Suddenly a `she´ appeared in the poem,
almost out of nowhere. I say `almost´
because she was well-known to Nark -
in the Biblical sense -
and the happy pair sat down on the bankside
where they dipped Nark´s bare feet in the stream together
like a couple of symbolic turtle dove´s.

Sad to say, this idyllic scene was of short duration.
The inevitable arrived, bringing storm clouds with it
which didn´t symbolise a battle,
neither was there any rain,
which might have symbolised tears.
However, she-who-is-nameless was hurt,
but instead of explaining the cause of her injury,
she dissimulated.
When Nark proposed dipping another bare foot
she turned from him, like a stream turned from its course.

Several days passed in this way
until one morning Nark went to sit by the stream
and found its bed quite dry.
`Well bugger me,´ exclaimed Nark.
There was a willow tree nearby so Nark plucked
a forked wand and began dowsing.
She-who-is-nameless watched all this
from a position of concealment behind a tree.
She knew he was puzzled - who wouldn´t be -
but she never explained.

Nark knew a thing or two about the course
of subterranean flows and with the help of his wand
he soon found a spring that ran into a deep pool.
He sat down by the side of it and gazed
at his reflection in its glassy surface.
She-who-is-nameless was peeping over his shoulder
but he didn´t notice her reflection behind him,
not even when she chucked the key of their cottage
over his head into the pond.

Popular myth maintains that Nark is there still
with a really enormous pile of bare feet
and more points than he knows what to do with.
This is the reason that so many psychologists
require a prosthesis.




Mike