Category: Before the Rain

The earth moved,
celestial mechanics.
Winter benched by spring = planting,
to be benched by summer = growing,
to be benched by autumn = harvest.

Spring, out of the lab and into the field,
tissue culture becomes seedling, becomes plant,
becomes crop.
Agronomy, it’s what we do –
why the government pays us.
Results : what the farmers want,
and increased yield.

Every year,
coming from university to the hinterland
vacation time students – near graduates.
Practicum,
spending summer toiling the soil,
learning the difference between applied and theoretical
and
tilling …… and the till.

Rumour maintained this year there would be only two,
normally four –
belt tightening, rumour added, government deficit etc.
Rumour also thought both were women.
Almost graduates?
Their age must be in the same street as mine
Or one over –
two at most.
I hoped rumour was truth.

Bletchley Park : citadel of cryptography,
crib of computing,
saved the Allies from Hitler
and kept an eye on the Soviets … for years afterwards.

Enigma? It was,
until Alan Turing cracked it –
“how?”– was question from the floor.
The old man leaned forward,
he had been Turing’s chess partner
and colleague – years before.
“ Nazi bombast …..
self conviction made them careless –
Enigma was watertight – the operators weren’t.”

Dave, hearty and big voiced,
reassuringly rumpled,
disobedient hair
and
auditioning waistline.
Always full of bonhomie. And always wondering,
about
my perceptions of colleagues and work,
casting bait –
“…… Dennis thinks his shit doesn’t stink
……. .the artificial pollination project is a waste of time. ”

And asking questions that weren’t,
but GPS soundings
of where I went …. and who I saw – after hours.
Stirring the waters,
–                             to see where the fish was
–                               what direction it might go
–                                  and the places it had been.

The corporate double agent –
I often wondered to whom he was reporting.
He couldn’t have been very good ….
an eager to please
and unworldly 22-year-old cracked him. Bombast.

It was like a book
with a beginning and end, but no middle.
The women of the town were too young
or already wives.
Availability :
fundamental prerequisite for a relationship.
They weren’t ….
going from high school to the marriage
or education in distant centres often returning,
married or divorced,
nest- building or past abandoning.
Or dented by the inattention of neither.
And older – too old.

I had come young,
hoping for adventure
settling for time out.
Career had found me.
It has come as a surprise,
an opening bid hoped for, but not expected.

Conspicuously single and lonely.
Gay? Many thought so,
before time was liberal ….
when gay was still vice and precarious.

Wanted :
for young professional male
an Intelligent intelligent, attractive, loving, vivacious, outdoorsy woman.

Wanted,
an intelligent, attractive, loving, vivacious woman.
Wanted,
an intelligent, attractive, loving, woman.
Wanted,
an intelligent, attractive, woman.
Wanted, 
an intelligent woman.
Wanted
a woman.

I loved going to work
it made me feel useful and appropriate,
and not lonely.