Thanks for these encouraging remarks, guys.
Andrew - have you written your Jarrah Jack poem(s)?
Max
[my Norman may get to read my lines - but asking round…other survivors of that lost world tell me ‘not unkind’, but wonder what I may write about them.
None were eccentric enough.]
On Nov 13, 2014, at 11:18 AM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Your ink is flowing well, Max. I too loved Disposals - and this one Cheap:
> I knew a man like this, only drugs got him. (Jarrah Jack was his moniker.)
> Homeless really, he bummed from commune to commune and then brought fresh
> fruit in a bag to the suburbs to sell.
>
> Andrew
>
> On 13 November 2014 08:28, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Congrats, Max, especially for Disposals, well worth redipping into. For
>> its range, it's acceptance.
>>
>> Bill
>>
>>
>>> On 13 Nov 2014, at 2:23 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>> My thanks to Anny for posting me twice on Halvard's blogspot -
>>>
>>> http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.it/2014/11/max-richards_7.html
>>>
>>> and the second is a piece I'd otherwise have sent this week to poetryetc
>> - she remarks:
>>>
>>> I had to publish your other Seattle poem on the Day of the Dead on
>> another page:
>>>
>>> http://halvard-johnson.blogspot.it/2014/11/max-richards.html
>>>
>>> Thanks again, Anny and behind her, Halvard.
>>>
>>> Cheap
>>>
>>> My frugal friend Norman
>>> resolved to live like Thoreau
>>> though employed where I was,
>>> both on decent salaries.
>>>
>>> Norman taught inter alia
>>> American literature,
>>> including Walden,
>>> sometimes with me.
>>>
>>> He'd bring me some trifle
>>> by Cummings or Williams -
>>> now isn't that fine!
>>> Mostly read Victorians,
>>>
>>> the more forgotten
>>> the better for him.
>>> Their plots were passed
>>> on in any chat with him.
>>>
>>> He deplored how little
>>> we asked of students.
>>> Meeting a new bunch
>>> one year he said:
>>>
>>> for me please write
>>> a short essay each week.
>>> Most of his students
>>> transferred to me.
>>>
>>> Some also preferred
>>> chairs and a table
>>> to the benches he made
>>> from scrap planks of wood
>>>
>>> on which he served acrid
>>> tea in mugs from op-shops.
>>> His weatherboard cottage
>>> was a short bike ride away.
>>>
>>> Every room was full of books,
>>> with many underfoot.
>>> Front and back, grass grew long
>>> around his self-sown trees.
>>>
>>> It was wild! He looked wild,
>>> gleaming through his beard.
>>> His clothes were from charity
>>> shops, ill-fitting and worn.
>>>
>>> A day came when he confided:
>>> 'I now buy op-shop underpants,
>>> very cheap.' Only he could wear
>>> dead men's undergarments.
>>>
>>> What he didn't spend
>>> he made sure good causes got,
>>> confidentially. He did let on
>>> he'd bought land -
>>>
>>> acres not farmable
>>> down Gippsland way,
>>> a train trip and a bike ride.
>>> He wanted it reforested,
>>>
>>> trees no-one would harvest.
>>> As he aged he visited them
>>> seldom. Last chat we had
>>> he said the farmer next door
>>>
>>> had taken the land off
>>> his hands, very cheap.
>>> Privately I called him
>>> 'our cut-price Thoreau'.
>>>
>>> Tread lightly - that he did.
>>> I nurtured his wedding gift,
>>> a gum-tree sapling
>>> in an old tin, but it died.
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> 'Undercover of Lightness'
> http://walleahpress.com.au/recent-publications.html
> 'Shikibu Shuffle'
> http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/new-from-aboveground-press-shikibu.html
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