He was lagging behind the rest of the men. Trudging with heaving feet, his boots strangled in mud. He felt beyond exhausted. Each footfall was an effort. He no longer felt the blisters as he walked. The men plodded towards a small town. They crossed a stone bridge. He was almost oblivious to the deep river that meandered beneath it. Ahead of him the town was a shell. Buildings had been reduced to rubble. Nothing was left and the whole place felt hollow. Another empty town: another point to secure.
The damage in the city gave away hints to the lives that its occupants had once led. There was a broken piano listing sideways near what once must have been a cafe. The piano’s ivory keys had been spat onto the pavement. This was where they stopped. The men ejected their packs, leaning them against a cobblestone, tumbledown wall. The men unwrapped their rifles from their bodies, and stretched the weight off their shoulders. He was the last to arrive and did the same as the other men. He was desperately trying to unload the agonizing stiffness from his body. The rest of the men began to smoke, and he drifted away from them. The smell of acrid tobacco was something he couldn’t face. The young man found himself arriving at the gaping mouth of a doorless home. It’s glass windows had been blown out and littered the pavement. He sat on some of the brick and concrete that had collapsed from the house’s structure and undid his boots. The laces were grimy. He looked at his shaking hands: his knuckles bloody and split from the cold and the damp. Removing the boots were an agony as he smudged layers of open blisters at his heels. His socks were blood-stuck to his feet. He clenched his jaw as he exposed his sore, bare soles. His shoulders were slumped, his head hanging into his hands. A picture of dejection. After a time the soldier absently lifted his gaze to the interior of the broken house. He felt like an intruder as his eyes drifted between personal objects that had been abandoned when the family had fled the destruction. There were moldy books with splayed out pages stuck between the rubble. A face-down painting leaned against a broken armchair. A wooden table was splintered against the floor. His eye was drawn something hidden beneath the wreckage. It looked like a small, circular leather pouch. He stood up slowly, and began to pick his way through the rubble. The young man reached for the pouch. It lay comfortably in the palm of his hand. He ran his fingers over the scuffed leather and then clicked it open. Inside was a steel fly reel complete with the thin thread of fishing line. It felt familiar, a relic from a previous life. Another time. He found the end of the line and tugged it quickly, remembering the sing of the reel as it turned. For the first time in months, the beginnings of a smile appeared at the edges of his mouth. He wound the line back and then placed the reel into its pouch. Then he began to explore the rubble. The soldier removed chunks of plaster, fragments of wallpaper and crumbled bricks. He was only just eighteen years old: a boy in a man’s body. If one had watched him squirrel around the destruction, one might be forgiven in thinking him a child on a treasure hunt. But there was a slow despondency to his movements that gave a hint of spent maturity begrudgingly earned. There was a lack of hope. Suddenly his body language changed, his shoulders lifted and his heart began to feel less worn out. He bend down and gently lifted the long tube of a rod case. It was creased near one end from the weight of a collapsed roof beam, but a sparkle of possibility had begun to emerge in his eyes. He dusted off the case in a broad sweep of his hand and then unzipped the top. Inside, he tenuously pitched the edge of a material bag between two fingers. The young man gently pulled the bag from within its case, feeling for the ribs of a fishing rod. He took the bag outside, feeling like he had found a hidden present. He unwrapped the bag, finding the two pieces of a varnished cane fly rod. It was intact and only one of the steel eyes needed to be bent straight. He squeezed the two rod pieces together and held the cork handle. The faint indentations from the fingers of its absent owner were smooth in his hand. He flicked the rod above his head, listening to the whip of its movement. The creased grin transformed into a smile. The first in months. With the reel locked against the handle and the line neatly fed from eye to eye, he placed the rod on the ground. Memories of happier times were at the foreground of his mind. The chatter of the other soldiers, the cold, and the past few months began to evaporate, if only for a moment. Barefoot, he went back to his pack and rummaged through a side pocked to find some tape and a pair of pliers. The other soldiers ignored his movements as they always had; they didn’t see the purpose in his step. It was nothing new. He had never felt that he belonged in this knot of other men. When he returned to the broken home, the young man began searching the rubble again. When he emerged, he had found a nail stud from some furniture and feathers from a burst cushion. He had also scratched some horse hair from the padding of a rumpled settee. He worked away the thread from a seam in his jacket and cut some wool from his sock. He placed the nail in the teeth of the pliers began to bend it into the arc of a hook. Once that was done, he fashioned an eyelet which would anchor the fishing gut. Satisfied with its shape, he then taped the plier’s handle together so that to hook was held firm in its grasp. Wedging the pliers between two bricks, and on his haunches, he began to fashion a fly from his hook. He wound the wool, thread and feathers and hair around trying to imitate a mayfly. His hands found their way around the hook with an old familiarity. After some time, he was satisfied by the product of his imitation. The young man then retrieved the rod, pulled out a length of line and threaded the fishing gut through the hook. He shrugged off his military jacket and then made his way back to the river. With every footstep towards the stream, the violence of his life began to recede. He chose a break between some gnarled trees and made his way down the bank. There was a patch of pebbled sand which hurt his feet and then he was in the water. Upstream he saw some telltale rises. Something was feeding gentle off the surface. He distracted himself from the cold by drawing out more line and deciding where he would aim his first cast. He chose what looked like a deep pool that looked slower than the fast-running water that pushed against his shins. With a beautiful arc of his arm, he conducted the rod into looping notes of line. With a final flourish, he threw the fly towards the pool. It landed gently on the surface, ebbing with the current not quite where he wanted it. He drew in the slack, his eye focused on the fly. Nothing... For his second cast, the memory began to return to his arms more readily. With a swish, the infinity of line looped behind him, gained momentum, and landed in a neat seam across the water during his forward cast. The fly landed perfectly. It was gentle. Enticing. He stripped in the line too quickly, excitement and recollections taking their firm hold of his mind. There was a rise. An abrupt swallowing of the water. His heart beat quicker into his throat. And the fish disappeared, leaving his fly untouched. And so it was that the young man made his way along the stream. His footing became more sure over the slippery rocks, his body measuring the current. He cast towards the rises he saw, desperately hoping that one of them would plunge his fly deep into the water. Time seemed to elapse without him knowing and the town became a speck in the distance. The conflict that had knotted his shoulders were massaged away and he remembered a simpler time. He thought about afternoons stalking trout in the Drakensberg streams. He thought about walks in the mountains with his father and their collie, Impi. He thought of the day he tracked one of the Nguni calves into a deep kranz where he was forced to spend the night after the weather had turned. It had been a long time since he had thought of anything other than foxholes, keeping his rifle clean and the paralyzing fear of gunshots. The artistry returned as his mind wandered. He traced a signature in the air with the line, and threw the fly to the water’s edge of the opposite bank. It was smooth and flowing and wonderful. The fly drifted over ripples made in the water. And then it was gone. It was taken into the deep caverns of the river. Pulling tight, the line stretched away from him. Almost by instinct the young man struck the tip of the rod upwards, and the line unzipped the water, sending with it a spray of liquidity. The reel began to whine as it stripped out the line. The fish was running fast. He gained better footing, and as he did so, everything went slack. He furiously clawed the line back in. There was an explosion in the water in front of him. The silver silhouette of a fish danced on its tail, straddling the surface. And then it was gone in a splash. He was connected to the fish and felt its life through the line as it darted beneath the water. He let out a yelp: it burst from his lungs with a boyish innocence and bounded over the water. Life seemed better. The trout ran again and the boy was lost in his fishing. And then he felt the sound of a blast in his chest. It almost knocked the young man over. Behind him there was an eruption of frantic shouting. Panic. Men’s voices. And then flames. They exploded over the town in the distance and licked at the edges of the stream. An empty stone returned to the pit of his stomach and fear clawed towards his neck. He glanced at the carnage over his shoulder. And then looked back and the arc of his fishing rod...
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The Truly GreatBY STEPHEN SPENDER
I think continually of those who were truly great. Who, from the womb, remembered the soul’s history Through corridors of light, where the hours are suns, Endless and singing. Whose lovely ambition Was that their lips, still touched with fire, Should tell of the Spirit, clothed from head to foot in song. And who hoarded from the Spring branches The desires falling across their bodies like blossoms. What is precious, is never to forget The essential delight of the blood drawn from ageless springs Breaking through rocks in worlds before our earth. Never to deny its pleasure in the morning simple light Nor its grave evening demand for love. Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With noise and fog, the flowering of the spirit. Near the snow, near the sun, in the highest fields, See how these names are fêted by the waving grass And by the streamers of white cloud And whispers of wind in the listening sky. The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire’s centre. Born of the sun, they travelled a short while toward the sun And left the vivid air signed with their honour. The World Is Too Much With Us By William Wordsworth The world is too much with us; late and soon, Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;— Little we see in Nature that is ours; We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon! This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon; The winds that will be howling at all hours, And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers; For this, for everything, we are out of tune; It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn. A Thing of Beauty – John Keats A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its lovliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make 'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake, Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms: And such too is the grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead; An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. Ozymandias By Percey Shelley I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.” The Listeners By Walter de la Mare ‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, Knocking on the moonlit door; And his horse in the silence champed the grasses Of the forest’s ferny floor: And a bird flew up out of the turret, Above the Traveller’s head: And he smote upon the door again a second time; ‘Is there anybody there?’ he said. But no one descended to the Traveller; No head from the leaf-fringed sill Leaned over and looked into his grey eyes, Where he stood perplexed and still. But only a host of phantom listeners That dwelt in the lone house then Stood listening in the quiet of the moonlight To that voice from the world of men: Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the dark stair, That goes down to the empty hall, Hearkening in an air stirred and shaken By the lonely Traveller’s call. And he felt in his heart their strangeness, Their stillness answering his cry, While his horse moved, cropping the dark turf, ’Neath the starred and leafy sky; For he suddenly smote on the door, even Louder, and lifted his head:— ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. Never the least stir made the listeners, Though every word he spake Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house From the one man left awake: Ay, they heard his foot upon the stirrup, And the sound of iron on stone, And how the silence surged softly backward, When the plunging hoofs were gone. He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven By William Butler Yeats HAD I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half-light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. Jabberwocky By Lewis Carroll ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun The frumious Bandersnatch!” He took his vorpal sword in hand; Long time the manxome foe he sought— So rested he by the Tumtum tree And stood awhile in thought. And, as in uffish thought he stood, The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame, Came whiffling through the tulgey wood, And burbled as it came! One, two! One, two! And through and through The vorpal blade went snicker-snack! He left it dead, and with its head He went galumphing back. “And hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!” He chortled in his joy. ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogoves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Funeral Blues
by W. H. Auden Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, Prevent the dog from barking with the juicy bone. Silence the pianos and, with muffled drum, Bring out the coffin. Let the mourners come. Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead Scribbling in the sky the message: “He is dead!” Put crepe bows around the white necks of the public doves. Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves. He was my north, my south, my east and west, My working week and Sunday rest, My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song. I thought that love would last forever; I was wrong. The stars are not wanted now; put out every one. Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun. Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood. For nothing now can come to any good. 'No Man is an Island' By John Donne No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. Whoever You Are Holding Me Now in Hand By Walt Whitman Whoever you are holding me now in hand, Without one thing all will be useless, I give you fair warning before you attempt me further, I am not what you supposed, but far different. Who is he that would become my follower? Who would sign himself a candidate for my affections? The way is suspicious, the result uncertain, perhaps destructive, You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard, Your novitiate would even then be long and exhausting, The whole past theory of your life and all conformity to the lives around you would have to be abandon’d, Therefore release me now before troubling yourself any further, let go your hand from my shoulders, Put me down and depart on your way. Or else by stealth in some wood for trial, Or back of a rock in the open air, (For in any roof’d room of a house I emerge not, nor in company, And in libraries I lie as one dumb, a gawk, or unborn, or dead,) But just possibly with you on a high hill, first watching lest any person for miles around approach unawares, Or possibly with you sailing at sea, or on the beach of the sea or some quiet island, Here to put your lips upon mine I permit you, With the comrade’s long-dwelling kiss or the new husband’s kiss, For I am the new husband and I am the comrade. Or if you will, thrusting me beneath your clothing, Where I may feel the throbs of your heart or rest upon your hip, Carry me when you go forth over land or sea; For thus merely touching you is enough, is best, And thus touching you would I silently sleep and be carried eternally. But these leaves conning you con at peril, For these leaves and me you will not understand, They will elude you at first and still more afterward, I will certainly elude you, Even while you should think you had unquestionably caught me, behold! Already you see I have escaped from you. For it is not for what I have put into it that I have written this book, Nor is it by reading it you will acquire it, Nor do those know me best who admire me and vauntingly praise me, Nor will the candidates for my love (unless at most a very few) prove victorious, Nor will my poems do good only, they will do just as much evil, perhaps more, For all is useless without that which you may guess at many times and not hit, that which I hinted at; Therefore release me and depart on your way. The Second Coming By WB Yeats Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand. The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? I feel a poem By Don Mattera Thumping deep, deep I feel a poem inside wriggling within the membrane of my soul; tiny fists beating, beating against my being trying to break the navel cord, crying, crying out to be born on paper Thumping deep, so deeply I feel a poem, inside No Fences at Night By ME! The disappearance of the sun and exposure to the moon Forces me to abandon my eyes in favour of my ears. So I wait for it to begin. First a gentle ovature of insects. Their flute-atious voices become the founding night's choir. An invisible conductor creates the ebb and flow Of shrill repetitions that energize my sightless vista. A blind following of nightjars is next. Their soprano voices trill and swirl in the darkness Like a plume of well-versed feathers Each note is a deliberate melody. An intrusion of wailing Discords the perfectly placed symphony Like a baby crying in the back row A jackal bates the evening air and then is gone. Her howl is replaced by an excited whoop As a teenager's encoure lolls off the tongue Of a loping hyena Confidently hidden by the still night air. The crescendo comes much later After the rhythm and ecstasy of animal voices And unplaced instruments Grow tired by the dawn. The searching drawl begins deep In the bowels of a lioness. Her breathe forced between incisored jaws A laboured density of semiquavers Seem to penetrate the earth itself But achieve no response. Without a roof or enclosure, The concert in blackness Makes me feel less vulnerable My wilderness displacement Replaced by an elemental joy. Love Preparing To Fly by Gerard Manley Hopkins He play'd his wings as tho' for flight; They webb'd the sky with glassy light. His body sway'd upon tiptoes, Like a wind-perplexed rose; In eddies of the wind he went At last up the blue element. Pied Beauty By Hopkins Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough; And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim. All things counter, original, spare, strange; Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?) With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim; He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him Wilderness By Carl Sandburg THERE is a wolf in me ... fangs pointed for tearing gashes ... a red tongue for raw meat ... and the hot lapping of blood-I keep this wolf because the wilderness gave it to me and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fox in me ... a silver-gray fox ... I sniff and guess ... I pick things out of the wind and air ... I nose in the dark night and take sleepers and eat them and hide the feathers ... I circle and loop and double-cross. There is a hog in me ... a snout and a belly ... a machinery for eating and grunting ... a machinery for sleeping satisfied in the sun-I got this too from the wilderness and the wilderness will not let it go. There is a fish in me ... I know I came from saltblue water-gates ... I scurried with shoals of herring ... I blew waterspouts with porpoises ... before land was ... before the water went down ... before Noah ... before the first chapter of Genesis. There is a baboon in me ... clambering-clawed ... dog-faced ... yawping a galoot's hunger ... hairy under the armpits ... here are the hawk-eyed hankering men ... here are the blond and blue-eyed women ... here they hide curled asleep waiting ... ready to snarl and kill ... ready to sing and give milk ... waiting-I keep the baboon because the wilderness says so. There is an eagle in me and a mockingbird ... and the eagle flies among the Rocky Mountains of my dreams and fights among the Sierra crags of what I want ... and the mockingbird warbles in the early forenoon before the dew is gone, warbles in the underbrush of my Chattanoogas of hope, gushes over the blue Ozark foothills of my wishes-And I got the eagle and the mockingbird from the wilderness. O, I got a zoo, I got a menagerie, inside my ribs, under my bony head, under my red-valve heart-and I got something else: it is a man-child heart, a woman-child heart: it is a father and mother and lover: it came from God-Knows-Where: it is going to God-Knows-Where-For I am the keeper of the zoo: I say yes and no: I sing and kill and work: I am a pal of the world: I came from the wilderness. THE THOUGHT-FOX By Ted Hughes I imagine this midnight moment’s forest: Something else is alive Beside the clock’s loneliness And this blank page where my fingers move. Through the window I see no star: Something more near Though deeper within darkness Is entering the loneliness: Cold, delicately as the dark snow, A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf; Two eyes serve a movement, that now And again now, and now, and now Sets neat prints into the snow Between trees, and warily a lame Shadow lags by stump and in hollow Of a body that is bold to come Across clearings, an eye, A widening deepening greenness, Brilliantly, concentratedly, Coming about its own business Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed. Walking By Ruth Everson Anyone who has journeyed Knows what it is to be lost: For hours, the paths looking the same yet strange, Travelled and untraveled memory-muddled. Then meeting that evening Walker, the Moon, Dragging a sack of darkness, Empty of the stars too heavy to bear. Behind you, the old dog, Panting at your heels, Believing as always, that you will find the way – If only for him and his rough, old fur. There are thorns ahead, And a riverbank that will ask you To use your small strength to lift the dog, Heavier now than you ever remembered. You may stop, longing for that other, Final Walker, But the old gold eyes are watching. Anyone who has travelled Knows what it is to find home: The old dog, fed and asleep, Skin twitching as you smooth his side To feel the thud of heart under hand. He dreams of another walk, You know, it was the golden eyes That lit the path back home. Silence By Thomas Hood There is a silence where hath been no sound, There is a silence where no sound may be, In the cold grave—under the deep deep sea, Or in the wide desert where no life is found, Which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound; No voice is hush’d—no life treads silently, But clouds and cloudy shadows wander free, That never spoke, over the idle ground: But in green ruins, in the desolate walls Of antique palaces, where Man hath been, Though the dun fox, or wild hyena, calls, And owls, that flit continually between, Shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan, There the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone. somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond By ee cumming somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond any experience,your eyes have their silence: in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me, or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me though i have closed myself as fingers, you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens (touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if your wish be to close me, i and my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly, as when the heart of this flower imagines the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility:whose texture compels me with the color of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens;only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands The Naming of Cats By T S Eliot The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter, It isn’t just one of your holiday games; You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES. First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily, Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James, Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey -- All of them sensible everyday names. There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter, Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames: Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter -- But all of them sensible everyday names. But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular, A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified, Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular, Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride? Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum, Such as Munkstrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat, Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum -- Names that never belong to more than one cat. But above and beyond there’s still one name left over, And that is the name that you never will guess; The name that no human research can discover -- But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess. When you notice a cat in profound meditation, The reason, I tell you, is always the same: His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name: His ineffable effable Effanineffable Deep and inscrutable singular Name. Talk to you tonight, By Nate Klug I wrote this morning, knowing it would only be the afternoon where you are, will be, whole neighborhood still wrapped in a tule fog that won’t let up—so you reported before supper while I slept. I almost wrote this afternoon instead, taking your point of view, dissolving into it-- but then imagined you half-awake, and irked, into my future/current noon texting for clarification. A Love poem for Prime Numbers 59 wakes up on the wrong side of the bed. Realizes all his hair is on one side of his head. Takes just under a minute to work out that it’s because of the way that he slept. He finds some clothes and gets dressed. He can’t help but look in the mirror and be subtly impressed How he looks rough around the edges and yet casually messed. And as he glances out the window, he sees the sight that he gets blessed withof 60 from across the street. Now 60 was beautiful. With perfectly trimmed cuticles, dressed in something suitable. Never rude or crude at all. Unimprovable, right on time as usual, more on cue than a snooker ball but liked to play it super cool. 59 wanted to tell her that he knew her favorite flower. He thought of her every second, every minute, every hour. But he knew it wouldn’t work, he’d never get the girl. Because although she lived across the street they came from different worlds. While 59 admired 60’s perfectly round figure, 60 thought 59 was odd. One of his favorite films was “101 Dalmatians.” She preferred the sequel. He romanticized the idea they were star-crossed lovers. They could overcome the odds and evens because they had each other. While she maintained the strict views imposed on her by her mother That separate could not be equal. And though at the time he felt stupid and dumb For trying to love a girl controlled by her stupid mum, He should have been comforted by the simple sum. Take 59 away from 60, and you’re left with the one. Sure enough after two months of moping around, 61 days later, 61 was who he found, He had lost his keys and his parents were out. So one day after school he went into a house As he noticed the slightly wonky numbers on the door, He wondered why he’d never introduced himself before, As she let him in, his jaw dropped in awe. 61 was like 60, but a little bit more. She had prettier eyes, and an approachable smile, And like him, rough around the edges, casual style, And like him, everything was in disorganized piles, And like him, her mum didn’t mind if friends stayed a while. Because she was like him, and he liked her. He reckoned she would like him if she knew he was like her, And it was different this time. I mean, this girl was wicked, So he plucked up the courage and asked for her digits. She said, “I’m 61.” He grinned, said, “I’m 59.” Today I’ve had a really nice time, So tomorrow if you wanted you could come over to mine? She said, “Sure.” She loved talking to someone just as quirky, She agreed to this unofficial first date. In the end he was only ready one minute early, But it didn’t matter because she arrived one minute late. And from that moment on there was nonstop chatter, How they loved “X Factor,” how they had two factors, How that did not matter, distinctiveness made them better, By the end of the night they knew they were meant together. And one day she was talking about stuck-up 60, She noticed that 59 looked a bit shifty. He blushed, told her of his crush: “The best thing that never happened because it led to us.” 61 was clever, see, not prone to jealousy, She looked him in the eyes and told him quite tenderly, “You’re 59, I’m 61, together we combine to become twice what 60 could ever be.” At this point 59 had tears in his eyes, Was so glad to have this one-of-a-kind girl in his life. He told her the very definition of being prime Was that with only one and himself could his heart divide, And she was the one he wanted to give his heart to, She said she felt the same and now she knew the films were half true. Because that wasn’t real love, that love was just a sample, When it came to real love, they were a prime example.’ – Harry Baker One of my all time best aviation authors is Richard Bach. He blends the philosophical with aviation and I love the fruitfulness of this combination. I corresponded with him briefly whilst capturing my own flying imagination onto paper, and being able to have an exchange with one of my writing heroes was significant, to say the least. Anyway, I have just finished 'Out of my Mind', and this is an extract: "The roof of the hangar door was a long shallow arch, fifty feet above the ground. Beneath the arch, a wide band of windowpanes, hundreds of windowpanes. Beneath the windows, giant doors, thirty feet tall. The thunder, deep and low, was the sound of one of those massive doors rolling open. I watched, unmoving. Voices across the distance, unintelligible. A laugh. The men wore white overalls. They’re mechanics, I thought, then rephrased: They’re ground engineers. The deep rumble continued, a tall black rectangle of the interior widening. Presently the rumbling stopped and the door stood open. A bird sang nearby, four sudden notes to the sun, a song I did not recognize. Then from within the hangar appeared an aircraft, a small open biplane, gradually pulled into the day. Silver, the wings, the colour of metal flaked from a lathe. A fuselage of dusty mint, silver again the surfaces of the rudder and elevators. A fitter pulled at each wingtip, one on the tail pushed a dolly on which rested the machine’s tailskid. Their voices carried on the breeze, though distance mixed the sound, and not a word could I understand. Airports I known and I love, airports have always been home to me, no matter where on the planet I might be. Not thinking, then, I began to walk along the path to the hangar. Softly rolling countryside, a mile-wide square of level turf around the hangar. No runways, no taxiways. Not an airport, would they call it. An aerodrome. The path curved right, then left again. The hangar was screened for a while by a hedge bordering the pathway. But a few minutes later the hedge dropped away to a row of careful flowers planted. Primula. Primrose, they might say here. By now the hangar was huge at my left. Fronting it was a building of wood and stone, to the left of that, a car-park. This is where I stopped again. There were several motor vehicles on the gravel. Small, most of them, squarish, metals dull and metals gleaming. A gawky motorcycle, as much a motorbike painted olive green, balanced on a frail kickstand." The small things are often the lens which put the bigger things in life into perspective.
After supper, and before we say our prayers, I tuck Bella into bed. She reaches across to her bedside table for the book that we have been reading chapter by chapter over the past few nights, asking "What happens next, Dad?" I have been waiting for the timing to be right to introduce Bella to the author that inspired to me to read, Roald Dahl. His books hold such an important place in my childhood memories, and I hope that he will be able to nurture the same sense of wonder in Bella's imagination. As I read, her small fingers trace the outline of the lined sketches on intermittent pages, and I known that Dahl is breathing his magic into little sparks behind her eyes. At the same time, I am transported to my own childhood memoriesthat have been long forgotten all those moons ago. Bella's head is nestled on my chest, and I know that she is smiling as I read. It is in these spaces where life's meaning is actualised. I've just finished this little treasure of a book, which details the ongoing conflict between man and lions in the Tuli/Mashatu area. Sensitively written, here is an extract that I particularly enjoyed:
"When I first saw the blonde solitary nomad, he was very shy of the vehicle. His colour was so light that, from his appearance, he could quite possibly have been sired by the 'Old Man', the former pride male of the Lalapanzi pride. His frame was large and well-muscled and glowed like gold. His face was still unblemished, unlike those of the veteran pride lions, such as the Pitsani males or Darky. This nomad was a magnificent young prince, over-eager and over-confident to claim his own kingdom. He was probably just over four years old and had very little mane clinging to his chest. From where he had come and to where he was going I could only guess. I found him again two days later on the plains, lying in a stately fashion at the foot of an umbrella shaped Shepherd's Tree, its canopy fanning wide and blocking out rays of the midday sun and casting a broad circle of shade around his resting body. After his initial concern for my presence, as I parked some one hundred paces from him, he settled and began to stare motionless across the plains as they shimmered in the heat. As he sat the wind blew softly from the south, bringing to the nomad secret messages of animals and activities below him. Occasionally he would lift his yellow head high and inhale an invisible scent. As the sun began to sink to the horizon and the sky was ignited by the sunset, he rose, stretched his long wiry body and began to stride purposefully down towards the Matabole River, the river which has its confluence with the Majale River in the core of the Lower Majale pride's heartland." There is a theme to the books I am reading. A wonderful passage from this one:
"When I carried the up of coffee out, I found him sitting on our swing (a half cut tyre, suspended on a beam between two Mopane trees) swaying gently to the rhythm of the music. He was watching the hippos playing in the river below. He was so lost in his reverie that he didn't hear me approaching. I put my tray down on the grass and sat down next to it to pour the coffee. We drank our coffee and listened to the concerto . The warm and rich melody filled the garden and soared out over the river where even the hippos seemed entranced by its beauty. A fish eagle dived from the sky, and as it glided gracefully over the water,, its echoing calls resounded in the music-filled landscape. We didn't talk as we sipped our coffee and listened to the music. Half-way through the solo part of the larghetto movement, my guest poured himself a second cup of coffee and stirred it absent-mindedly, although he had forgotten to put sugar into it. When the last strains of Mozart's finale faded away, leaving their dulcet echos in our heads, he peered into his empty coffee mug and informed me that, at his home in Pretoria, the concerto didn't sound the same." A favourite passage from Bruce Bryden's book:
Among the various feline species, the leopard is second only to the ordinary domestic cat when it comes to versatility and the ability to adapt to new circumstances. One can't make a straight comparison - the domestic cat, after all, is much smaller than the leopard - but both are survivors par excellence. A well-fed domestic cat will turn into a hunter in the wink of an eye if the opportunity arises, simply because the prey animal is there. In addition, it can breed with various of the smaller wild cats and produce viable offspring because there is no real genetic difference between them. So your placid old moggy sleeping on the windowsill is, to coin a phrase, a leopard in cat's clothing... So there we have the leopard, one of the jewels in the bushveld's crown, and despite all the personal grief that some of them have caused me, I can't help but agree with what Peter Turnbull-Kemp once wrote about them: "Man-eater or mole-hunter, he is a creature of consummate grace who still lives among some of us. Small, more light than the average man who hunts him: handsome in the sun and ethereal by moonlight, the leopard is an animal for whom at least a grudging admiration should be found. Let's try to keep him as a neighbour - except where the sublimely unconscious individual becomes insupportable to man. Let us recall that the man-eater and stock-killer knows none of our laws, and should be pitied for the ill-understood retribution which man may inflict upon him...let us recall, when we hear horrific stores of the leopard and his kin, that it is pity and understanding of the so-called lower animal which are required - not hatred. For pity, while a thing of which to be aware, is perhaps the mother of understanding." |
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