Sept 9th - An antithesis for every thesis

An antithesis for every thesis


We drove through Wombleton this afternoon,
and I am sure that cute and furry
Wimbles were, hidden in the bushes, decrying
the scarcity of ornamental trash,
the shortage of old newspapers, the lack
of plastic bags flapping wildly in the gaps
in chain-link fencing and I imagine
Uncle Etruria would charge the gang
to, after the everyday people are gone,
get out there with their bags and barrows, scattering
some crisp packets and tins and KFC
gnawed bones, to pretty the environment
and generally to give the place some tone.

Sept 8th - Who cares for the lichen?

Some lichen,
earlier this year...

Who cares for the lichen?

Who folds its laundry, warm from the machine?

Who keeps its kitchen clean and spits upon

a cloth to scrub behind its ears?  Who calms

the sorts of fears a lichen feels, insists

the environment is full of rough faced rock

and trees with sensually craggy bark?

Who monitors air quality between

those trees?  Who sees where a Vibram walkers sole

has gashed a divot from the matted growth

and gently smooths it back?  Who stacks dry stones

to form a wall where lichen fragments drifting

in the breeze drop into place?  Who meanders like

a tardigrade between the hyphae, pushing

eight legged from strand to strand?  Who stands to shade

it from high summer sun?  Who splashes dew

on it?  Who carves the hydrogen from water

using sunlight as a blade?  Who captures carbon

from the air and rearanges atoms into rings

of sugar, which leak through cell membranes to feed

their symbiotic partner in the dance?

Who leaches micro nutrients from stone?

Who lives, happily together alone, on any

handy outside surface?

Who cares for the lichen?

Sept 7th - When there's a murder in an old, old movie...

When there's a murder in an old, old movie...


Please try to keep sand off the body!
The SOCO shouts
for the seventeenth time.
However, with great solemnity,

and at one quarter speed
Wilson, Kepple and Betty continue dancing
the sand dance just outside the crime-scene tape.
Oy you!  Screams DI Blenkinsop,

I saw you hook that glove up with your cane,
Chaplin!  He fumes.  Let's have more happy/sad
clowning from you, and less sneaking off with clues
to check out in your own time.

In fact, he concludes, why don't you go
find Laurel and Hardy
and ask what's taking them so long
fetching me a bloody stepladder...