Max good to see you still snappy
Cheers P
Did find last line bit awkward???like laboured -tricky territory didn't know
you still had golliwogs in Melbourne??
-----Original Message-----
From: Poetryetc: poetry and poetics [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Max Richards
Sent: 12 August 2009 02:04
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: snap: golliwog and guinea pig
Golliwog and Guinea Pig
With a Steiner school bazaar on soon, there's
hope I'll get there and find, in a display of soft toys -
colours and features world-embracingly
multiracial - an exquisite elegant Steiner
golliwog like the one I bought there years ago,
which my daughter threw out a car window.
I watched it - in the rear vision mirror
and over my shoulder - vanish, while I shouted No!
Perhaps it was picked up and passed unhurt
to an appreciative child who cherished it.
My revenge came later, failing to stop her guinea pig
fleeing into our bush garden by the river.
For which I apologized, profusely, then and thereafter.
Yet - perhaps it flourished, or longer than if in her care.
I like to think it survived both captivity
and liberation, found a mate, bred freely.
*
Years on, downstream some miles, cross-river, I saw
tiny creatures like feral guinea pigs scamper
to shelter - their bold scouts, I imagine,
had gone reconnoitring for pastures green -
swam, snout-high, sampled the grasses, returned,
leading the tribe between parted waters
(no miracle here, just one of our droughts)
to the promised land, secure and fecund;
imagine also their leader panting to some summit,
taking possession of ten piggy commandments,
struggling, as beginners do, not to confuse
idolatry and adultery, near-homonymic no-nos.
But golliwogs, dispersed through the world, disunited -
harder to imagine them - their prophet
leading them from bondage, diaspora reversed.
Or is this some dark prejudice on my part?
Max Richards
Doncaster, Vic, Australia
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