66 Days

It took 66 days for Bobby Sands to starve himself to death.

It took me many years to starve my mind of the fear of public speaking

& though I have come a long way & people praise my confidence

it is still a work-in-progress

• what fears have you overcome either partially or fully?
• mural in Belfast courtesy of Wiki Commons

That Little Kid at Maccas

That little kid in Maccas

from Aldinga Primary

with one hand on his yellow scooter

is picking up his order as I

am putting mine through.

Hello, he says brightly

& I say, hello, back

& I think should I be even speaking

with this kid?

[hasn’t he heard of stranger danger?]

so I ask him when did school go back

& he says, Monday so I ask him what grade he is in

[ he isn’t that little]

so I guess, Year seven

& he says, Year 5

& adds he comes each morning to Maccas

to fill up his tummy

so he can work hard .

He collects his pancake with chocolate syrup and strawberry milkshake

& scoots off

with his bag of calories and good work ethic.

*pic courtesy of Wiki Commons

the Well-Read Salmon

I was idling by the brook fishing for tranquility

when the phrase leapt into my head.

What was I to do with it?

Toss it back?

Nah.

It had me hooked. It wriggled and flashed.

What texts would the well-read salmon have tackled?

Isaac Walton’s ‘The Compleat Angler’, of course.

that old chestnut, ‘The Old Man and the Sea’

and ‘Cloudstreet’ where poor old Fish Lamb almost drowned

& was revived but ‘not all of Fish had come back’,

‘Moby Dick, perhaps though as everyone knows a whale is a mammal

not a fish

though the well-read salmon would have known that.

He would have been well-versed in sea poems too,

knowing by heart ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ being one up

on me.

& a hearty singer of sea shanties going up and down

the scales

This is For You, she said

Maybe because I was slipping away into the comfortable, undemanding

arms of magazines, she gave me a brand new bookmark from ifaw.

Now all you have to do is find a book to put it in, she said.

It’s like someone buys you a pair of slippers for your birthday,

you’ve got to get a dressing gown to go with them, and then a box of cigars

and a bottle of tawny port like an English gentleman to get you through

the evening and a cozy murder mystery to curl up with before the fire

& suddenly I knew what type of novel I wanted.

• what book have you got .lined up to read?
• do you smoke cigars, drink tawny port and curl up before the fire of a winter evening?