Dried Stooks

For those who like it pie hot, dripping from the poet's marf...

This morning, I read a little, then remembered some lines begun the other day. In looking for them, my mind allowed in some new phrases; this mind that I think has begun to learn economy and exactitude. And I confess, I wonder how to garner more readers. Urgh, greedy little thought. I should enjoy those I have, and on that note, I can even see their faces and be pleased. Because oddly, just when you think you know who your friends are, you find that tyrants often appears as helpers at first. Then suddenly, what others say becomes a bad time for you. But how much of that is in their head - or yours?

Good grief, I only wrote a poem!!! Well, tactics (for getting new follows and subscribes) might work in a shallow way - but the truth is that people will read stuff that’s good. I’m not going to con myself that my obscure type of crap is just beyond their ken - pah! Give them some credit - cos like me, they will think “**&& off, professor!” If you wrote crap, put it where it belongs, you aren’t Disney…

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Stook - a few or more sheaves of a standing crop stood on end, leant against each other, usually in the field where they grew, to dry in the sun. A term originating in middle English.

As a writer, you can spend a few minutes, paging back over notes because something similar to an earlier note just sprang to mind. In the end, they refuse to fit, and you question whether a poem is finished. This might have been a good excercise for many past writers, who deliberate and cogitate where one or the other would suffice. If they don’t drop in like jigsaw pieces, don’t spoil the picture.

We can be cagey about our work, fearing copyers; yet we want it read. Immitators may come, but audiences will shake their heads and say: “you can tell it’s not ***** a mile off”. I, who no longer hoard sheckles like some penny-pinching miser, spend my words when I see fit - but wisely. I don’t so much hold back as refrain* - too much apple in a pie can make you heave rather than die in apple heaven… …Too much crust and the fluids are parched into a gobful of desert. Mille combien?

‘Lazy plane’ has been with me years. Finally, it gets an out. ‘Virgin Mary Blue’ came just the othere day. She is unlikely to be taken soon, even though she went well with ‘buzzard high’. No, this poem is a moment to be left alone; a short relish, just like our summer reveries when we cease to rationalise, to wonder about moving on, or contemplate anything. Thought process evaporates and we know not that we know not for all too precious moments. And fleeting is as fleeting does; farewell, sweet daydream.

*refrain - a repeated melody; also to resist the urge to do or say or think something.