Thanks, Max - good tale, nicely wagged.
Andrew
On 5 June 2015 at 22:54, Bill Wootton <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Enjoyable romp, Max.
>
> Bill
>
>
> > On 4 Jun 2015, at 1:35 am, Max Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> >
> > Summer in Seattle
> >
> > On a good day in Cal Anderson Park
> > you may see shining young bodies
> > stretched out soaking up the sun;
> >
> > others active with ball games,
> > some crowding each others’ bikes at polo,
> > some in a circle with hula hoops,
> >
> > or paired-off in circus gymnastics,
> > watched by a shirtless chap
> > with a cockatoo on his shoulder.
> >
> > Others sleep, mess of homelessness
> > strewn about them, likely to stir
> > and ask for your small change.
> >
> > Today I let my dog be petted
> > by a woman who once had a beagle
> > whose story took minutes to tell
> >
> > and was told again to a passerby
> > with her Australian dog called Sheila.
> > We watched a guy camped on the steps
> >
> > that lead to a blank stone wall with
> > waterworks machinery behind.
> > He was high on something, or
> >
> > perhaps (she thinks) schizophrenic -
> > clowning desperately in rags
> > fewer and fewer. She offered
> >
> > to bet - would he be naked or
> > not before five minutes were up?
> > I swore to be away in four,
> >
> > but we were talking about
> > the whisky she was sipping
> > from a coke bottle, the shelter
> >
> > she stays in since losing her house,
> > her hopes of a second go at rehab
> > down near Tacoma if they’ll have her back.
> >
> > This Paterson she’d just whizzed through
> > from the Public Library. Me,
> > I was spoiled for bestsellers long ago,
> >
> > by teaching Dickens and Jane Austen.
> > Really? Tell me the story of Pride
> > and Prejudice - would I like it?
> >
> > Oh, I floundered, the father must find
> > men with money to marry his daughters…
> > When was this? - Eighteen hundred or so.
> >
> > Before, she exclaimed, the Industrial
> > Revolution! that far back! It all seemed
> > a long way from our park with its folk
> >
> > making do on very little. Maybe start,
> > I said, with a movie. Laurence Olivier?
> > She remembered him - Hollywood,
> >
> > Lawrence of Arabia, he filmed all that.
> > I go that far back, she said, wistful:
> > I called my beagle Sherlock Holmes.
> >
> > The stone cone has water on again
> > flowing from the top, a cool volcano,
> > into a pond we’re not allowed in.
>
--
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
|