My father made me a desk, Max, he being a more than capable carpenter. I still use it. It's a bit hacked about but on it, essays have been written about everything from the unification of Italy to explicating Eliot's 'What the Thunder said'. Like you, I was the only one in the family to be provided with a desk. It did give focus. No road to riches however. My two deskless brothers bother the taxman more than I ever have or will - if that matters.
In stanza three below, I did wonder whether it was your father's spindly shanks for a sec before I recognised the card table. I wonder too, in stanza 15, whether you could afford a comma, which you use elsewhere to good effect eg stanza 16. Otherwise readers may wonder what on earth a 'plank essay' might be. 'Unfinishable' I like.
Bill
> On 2 Jul 2015, at 5:21 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Tables and Desks
>
> Mother never needed a desk -
> she had the kitchen table
> and her sewing machine.
>
> Father, knowing his colleagues
> had desks - in ‘studies’! -
> made do with his card table,
>
> set up in the living room
> as and when needed -
> wobbly legs, worn green baize;
>
> writing longhand reports
> on teachers he’d inspected,
> to be typed at the office.
>
> Sister did her homework
> on her bed or in it.
> Or on the bus to school.
>
> If I was to excel
> I needed a desk.
> One was got, tiny,
>
> with shelves on the side
> from desktop to floor,
> my French dictionary
>
> the biggest book we had.
> There I Englished Caesar,
> browsed The Golden Treasury.
>
> Work, seldom excellent but
> judged passable, was done.
> On it was confected verse,
>
> parodies and pastiche -
> ‘The Motor Mechanic
> to his Love’ by Max.
>
> Judy next door, my age, plump,
> friendly, stole a look on that desk
> at my secret watercolour art -
>
> nude slim girls copied from underwear
> ads in The Herald, without their bras.
> She said she wouldn’t tell on me.
>
> Verse? - no stopping me. When
> I moved to a share house
> with Phil and Denis
>
> and I forget who,
> my desk might have gone too,
> but Mother put her foot down.
>
> On a cheap typewriter
> on a wide plank essays
> were concocted on Shelley
>
> and the like, overdue
> but tolerated. Once hired
> to teach, I’d hog big desks
>
> at work and at home
> almost invisible under
> books and papers, others’
>
> essays, work unfinished,
> unfinishable in the clutter.
> Pensioning me off was a mercy.
>
> Now who needs a desk?
> My old knees support this
> laptop. Printer? - upstairs.
>
> Dictionaries? - nowhere.
> Shelley and the like - just
> google them, or trust memory.
>
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