How it works, Bill. Nice shifts of perspective.
I think ’wagging’ is Australian idiom? Not quite sure hornet pants…
Doug
(envying you your summer temps right ow)
> On Dec 27, 2017, at 8:39 AM, Andrew Burke <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> It's a good poem, Bill. It triggered memories as I read - which made me
> smile! Let your writing arm prosper in 2018!
>
> Andrew
>
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> On 27 December 2017 at 07:00, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> How come some
>> memories jag
>> fully formed,
>> others skedaddle
>> hardly registering?
>>
>> Nought to do
>> with 'importance'.
>> A white polyester shirt,
>> small collars,
>> rasped my school skin
>>
>> but looked cool,
>> basking under a v-neck.
>> At a friend's place,
>> above his mother's shop,
>> wagging school,
>>
>> Ross, cross-legged
>> on bare floorboards,
>> playing for me
>> Roger Waters,
>> Noises from the Body.
>>
>> Sitting stiffly,
>> wagging Modern History,
>> with ample Dianne,
>> on a floral lounge chair,
>> watching soap.
>>
>> Picking what I now know
>> to be cotoneaster berries,
>> Bob piffing them at me,
>> sprung with a red
>> handful.
>>
>> Mr Taylor unable
>> to find it in himself
>> to condemn,
>> shaking his head.
>> 'You're a layabout, Morter.'
>>
>> Years of tests,
>> assemblies, instructions,
>> yellow bus trips,
>> hitched rides,
>> all forgotten.
>>
>> In the clearing,
>> snippet caught
>> on Spanish bus radio,
>> stands a boxer.
>> Ly the ly ...
>>
>> and I'm back
>> in the bazaar,
>> with Daphne now,
>> the notes drifting
>> out through flywire
>>
>> on the window
>> of her brother's bungalow.
>> Dimly the street name
>> even comes,
>> Landsdowne.
>>
>> bw
>>
>
>
>
> --
> Andrew
> http://hispirits.blogspot.com/
> Books available through Walleah Press
> http://walleahpress.com.au
Douglas Barbour
[log in to unmask]
https://eclecticruckus.wordpress.com/
Recent publications: (With Sheila E Murphy) Continuations & Continuations 2 (UofAPress).
Recording Dates (Rubicon Press).
Listen. If (UofAPress):
Swept snow, Li Po,
by dawn’s 40-watt moon
to the road that hies to office
away from home.
Lorine Niedecker
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