My Wine Bottle has Pretensions

My wine bottle, I am told, has pretensions.

It came from the top shelf where the expensive

bottles are kept, for starters.

Too good for the hoi polloi.

It has airs, she states.

See how stiffly it carries itself.

Why, it even comes with a cork in it!

Too good for a metal cap.

And to top it all it has been aged in bourbon barrels.

What’s that all about? she says.

I take a good hard look at it.

It does look a little snooty.

We both glare at it off and on during the evening.

I don’t know what it makes of us.

The Poem Outside my Window

There’s a beautiful poem outside my window

a shrub two and a half metres tall

with coquettish purple flowers

and a little frost of throats.

There are other colours too

lavender and white

a trinity of colours.

It has a botanical name, of course,

though I much prefer its common name:

Yesterday. Today and Tomorrow.

I’ve written about it before but not like this,

Yesterday was our 215 th day with no community transmissions.

Today we have 20.

Tomorrow?

We watch the News Bulletins, updates from the Chief Medical Officer,

Blooms of anxiety.

Viral blooms.

That Bloke at OUR table

There was someone sitting at our table. This was the second time in less than a month that this had happened. My friend in the wheelchair was ropable but I suggested, good old level-headed me, that we cool it.

Mind if we sit at our table? I asked.

Be my guest, he said quaffing his ale.

We won’t bother you, I said and then after we got our beers we became companionable.

Our friend introduced himself.

Steve, he said extending his arm for a handshake. I didn’t want to seem prissy and Covidy, so I shook it with all the manliness I could muster. [I go to gym :)]

Unlike our former usurper, the bloke with a book, Steve was not a reader. He was a man of action who spent much of his life as a pneumatic/hydraulic mechanical engineer working in mines throughout Queensland and W.A.

He was a good drinker too, downing four pints to our one. And he was still lucid and like our former companion a Catholic who still attended mass.

How come, I said to my mate after, we always end up with Catholics?

And loners, he said.

Maybe it says more about us than them? I suggested.

Wolf Down

A few years ago I read a book called Wolf Hall.

Now I’m writing about Wolf Down

what the cat does with food when it’s been stuck

on the roof all day;

what we do now

wolfing down pleasure,

sunshine,

the great outdoors,

going for drives,

doing stuff together,

hoping to outfox the old virus for another day.

Thoze Cranberries

Thoze Cranberries

in the morning

not the ones you eat

though they’re pretty good too

but the ones you listen to

the ones from Ireland playing now

over the PA system in the mall

‘Dreams’

thoze impossible melodies

thoze haunted lines

playing through my blood

my brain,

such beauty,

such ‘harmonious madness’

hinting at what?

we’ll never know

joy or tragedy?

I go outside.

The day moves slow.

* what piece of music moves you?

Loose

My mother always warned me about loose women

to avoid them at all costs.

But what about loose lemons?

That’s a whole new ball game.

And I need one for my fish tonight.

Do I risk it?

And what about loose thoughts?

Isn’t that where creativity comes from,

thoughts that amble along like a jazz tune that’s lost its way?

I posted a poem last night about an invisible dog

that turned out to be a bit of a lemon.

Talking of which….

I’ll take one loose lemon, I say to the check-out girl,

and o, excuse the loose change.

Blackbird

The flower withheld its perfume

the sky withheld its rain

the road its destination

the labour its aim

 

She had taken away the love

life’s poetry and rhyme

Had taken all the flesh

left only the rind

the Wordsworth of Weeds

I read somewhere that weeds are the rodents of the plant world,

that they are sneakily aggressive, opportunistic, fiercely feral,

that they should be weeded out. I have heard this language before;

little good comes from it. Where are the Wordsworths of Weeds?

Plath comes closest, celebrating mushrooms. I like the strange,

tangled beauty of weeds, their punk swagger, their dogged persistence.

They too one day might inherit the earth.

 

While on the Subject of Udders

We were driving past cows full of paddocks when my friend

asked me whether I thought bulls considered cow udders

‘sexy’? I said I hadn’t given it much thought but added,

you don’t  see many pinups of naked cows on the sides

of barns or bulls wanking off to them thoughtfully

on sunny afternoons; unsatisfied we pulled over

and did a Google Search, typing in ‘do bulls …’ to which

suggestions came up, such as ‘do bulls hate red?’, ‘do bulls moo?’ ,

‘do they have horns?’ and then the big one: ‘do bulls find

cow udders sexy?’ to which Google replied, ‘no, it’s a human thing’.

and that was that till Denzel Curry’s cover of ‘Bulls on Parade’

came over the radio, and my friend started all over again

 

* pic courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Descent into the Maelstrom

Your addiction

whirlpools you

to

t

h

e

 

 

bottom

 

* sketch by Harry Clarke to Poe’s classic tale