Month: January 2015

After exams – serious drinking – then an unserious job.
Nostalgia forever remembers the summer as a farmhand
the unweighted freedom of thrusting youth
and harvest time.
Making hay
while the sun shone.
Shaved golden meadows
sun scented grass
barley water.

When the trailer is full
a bumping ride to the barn.
Pickup, load and stack. Pickup, unload and stack
hard and simple  – no ambiguity or complexity.
A bale teeters at the top of the pile
the farmer, quick for a big man, pushes it back.
It wouldn’t have done any harm – a glancing blow.
Funny you should say that he says.

Many years before he had been a teacher
cars yet to be two a garage.
Five shared transport to school
they shared petrol and colleagues foibles.
One morning on a quiet street – a lowercase t intersection
one car turning right, the other left
the school car had roadway permission.

A second look … hesitation… almost a third
convey falsehood – mistaken courtesy
both move at the same time.
A collision – brief and very minor.
Five workmates laugh
a good story for the staffroom
the other driver is slow to emerge
“shock probably.”
Seconds elapse.
Unconscious….surely not ? Cardiac arrest! Quickly now.

The door is opened and something fell.
Unknowing becomes knowing
becomes disbelief
none of them has seen a dead person before.
A small blow
exactly the right energy – precisely the wrong place.

Truth is shy announcing errors of self
more so when the mistake is not out loud.
Instinct had made one or two bad calls
ascribing awful as good and worthy as useless.
Still it was a pretty good forecaster
reliably predicting the weather of personality
always hedged against the dark side
building stopbanks to the flood of letdown.

With Robyn intuition met its match
database soundings indicated fraud
rodent cunning packaged in naiveté
ribboned with innocence.
Frustration yearned to trap
and expose subterfuge.

Resolution can have the most unlikely origin.
She had seen a photo of marijuana
and thought it a beautiful plant
one that would look good in her garden
a friend of her daughter offered seeds
“would the police mind? – it’s only for display.”
Innocence one. Intuition nil.

At the bottom of the world
a prodigal continent.
Where the hemisphere is South
but everywhere is north.

On an island created by
the fist thrust of glacier
a settlement devoted to research
partly science, partly suburb of America.
A needy cocoon of almost civilisation
linked to an impressed world
by an umbilical of aviation – flight’s fragile path over savage ocean.

Any workplace with two or more players will feel the pull
of ego on hierarchy
and the pyramid of real or self appointed importance.
In Antarctica it was the pilots. Undisputed.
They provided fresh fruit and vegetables
mail, newspapers from home and
when the dream had tarnished
and limitations too apparent, a magic carpet out.

An organization struts or glides in tune with its leader.
One year a hard-bitten commanding officer
whose swaggering machismo strutted ahead
who always encouraged his self appointed elite
with benign interpretation of infraction.

She was very young
more attractive than pretty, trim and dark – pixie like.
On the final rung of the steep ladder of ascent
a girl in what until recently had been a boy’s only club
it didn’t matter – outcome was independent of gender
a big adventure in uniform before the real task
serious money in commercial airlines.

Then not so much a dropped ball as fumble
doubts about technique, soft, less than whisper but
too loud to be dismissed as not needing investigation.
The scrutiny of an enquiry and decision to fail.
A game deciding penalty as time calls finish. Irreversible.

Sometimes there is no window or back door…. only exit
this was known – everything else just procedure.
Triplicate.
All that remained was the Commanding Officer’s signature.
The hard man softened. Iago became Hamlet
reluctant to body snatch a young person’s dream
launching an appeal futile even as it began
delaying the inevitable, stretching time until his own had expired.
It was the first task undertaken by his successor.