Posted in Unexpected

Conviction

Some things are best not be known
for parents
that teenagers are smoking marijuana
exploring the bodies of the opposite gender
or experimenting with those of the same.
Then it is easy to pretend
what may be very likely … is not.
The sleights of sight, inadvertence, inattention, insincerity
are focused by twin lenses : accident and malice.

One Monday morning
a young woman – a university student
who judgemental maleness deemed
disproportionately bold in relation to plainness
shrills inequality.
Allegedly weekend call in is unfair
two tertiary colleagues receiving her share.
A promise to enquire
two days later a phone call demanding the verdict.

Clenched teeth and a quiet afternoon
resolve to prove her wrong
equality expected
reprimand practised – never delivered.
Two years of expired timesheets confirm her grievance.

Self righteous turns brittle contrite
but something caught
denim jeans stepping over a barbed wire fence
minor league scorecards imprint substitutions
random
and then not.
Determination to be right uncovers wrong.
Theft.

Cross reference.
Correlation
elimination
explanation.
Summation : sample size = 2
one a personal favourite
promoted in advance of merit.

What lies between spinning a chamber
and pulling the trigger?
The clarity of God
or
human caprice?
Hope hoped not
and then …….
decided some things are best not known.

Posted in Unexpected

Equal Opportunity

The community was young, very young
hedonistic, promiscuous and migratory
migration here every summer
for money …. and accomplice desires.

The old-timers said the old days were better
no women and no chance
things were clear-cut
everybody knew the odds – zero the new equal.

The tide of women’s rights rises with the decades
reaching even here the last, loneliest fraternity house
the fair sex
fair game it would seem.

Progress predictable and well mannered in the laboratory
can prove very independent in the field
abandoning the freeway for the blue highway.
How to get a woman in Antarctica? Be one.

Posted in Unexpected

Foot and Mouth

We had been neighbours almost a decade
friendship only for the last four
Pam said it was best to wait five years
if the occupants were unchanged, it was time for introduction.
She had been there 37 years by then
her experience difficult to refute.
Good things do take time.

Kind and bighearted she drew us into her world.
brief chat became talk sometimes gossip
laughter a constant invitee.
Opinionated and witty
she extrapolated the conceits of the city authorities
the government
her adult children
herself
to side splitting absurdity.
It was impossible to have a conversation without being uplifted.

One summer scaffolding and painters
overdue by 10 years she maintained.
Mid job the workmen vanished
the house silent – a stage half set.

We made eye contact at the gate
a query as to whether the cheque had bounced.
The expected laughter never erupts.
We need some quiet right now she said.
“Our daughter is not well
actually she’s quite sick.”
She died two days later.
Flippancy never quite forgave itself.