What a horrible thing to happen, Pat. Melba too. My poem is still in need of much work and was not based on
anything that happened to me, personally. A friend of a female ex-student did tell this in a paragraph on
facebook and I thought it deserved more.
On Thu, Sep 13th, 2012 at 5:47 PM, Patrick McManus <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Ah reminds me of when my grandfather kindly gave away my collection of
> 78's
> including one side's with engravings on the reverse, a 1911 coronation
> 1930's wild comedy bands and Melba 'no place like home' etc etc
> Cheers P nearly 60 years on
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
> Behalf Of Bill Wootton
> Sent: 12 September 2012 21:39
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: uncanny snap
>
> Flicking through the clothes rack
> at the local op shop
> my fingers felt a familiar
> texture. Gossamer light,
> so sleek, so smooth
> and there, exposed fully
> on the rack,
> nestled
> amid the black,
> a red loveheart.
> Just like mine,
> I breathed.
> But wait,
> at the shoulder,
> a little tear.
> Odd.
> So that's why they're
> only asking twenty
> when I know I paid
> a hundred.
>
> But what
> is this... feeling?
> That tear is not
> close. It is
> exactly
> where mine is.
>
> It
> IS
> mine.
>
> ...the fuck
> is going on here?
>
> Then it dawned.
> Mum.
> She'd donated
> my sexyland outfit.
> Bitch.
> I explained the situation
> to the op shop girl,
> who might have nodded
> knowingly and yeh yehed.
> But no, she let me take it.
>
> Now it's home again.
> I hold it up on its op hanger.
> How mine is it?
> The black shoulder
> droops
> at the tear.
>
> But it's been away.
> The little vixen...
>
> Bill Wootton
> 12.9.12
>
>
>
|