Wednesday 9 June 2010

job's an orange tapered root vegetable

Busy, busy. I went along to a meeting to discuss Bristol's contribution to LGBT History Month next year, to see if there was anything useful I could do, after pointing out the shortcomings in the LGBTHM reading list earlier this year- more an inadvertent omission rather than an active exclusion. So that's one thing. Ideas for other stuff gratefully accepted.

And then to the Harbour. I was hunting cormorants, as I have an idea for a picture involving them. They're often sitting around on pontoons or buoys, wings spread in benediction. But there weren't any today. Though there was a nice crop of poppies on Phoenix Quay.

Heading for St Nicholas Market, I saw a peregrine falcon spiralling up in a thermal, high above the spire of Christ Church. I tried, and failed, to get a good photo of it, by which time it was a tiny dot in the sky. A chap with a stall full of very fresh carrots asked if the photography was a hobby.

"It's more a project," I said.

"Would you like some carrots?" he asked, brandishing a bunch.

"I'm afraid I've already got some at home," I said.

He wordlessly handed me a single carrot anyway. I was charmed. It's not often that sort of thing happens to me. It was very cheerful, the carrot, with its green frondy stuff waving out of my bike pannier.

So I wrote a crap poem. Which can be more fun than writing a good one.

What profits it the peregrine, if, lofting on the summer breeze,
Above the busy Bristol street where veg is sold and people fret,
And farmers proudly hand out carrots fresh from Somerset,
With green fronds on the top... and higher still he goes, so high that he's
Now almost lost in cloud, become a dot?
I've got the carrot; he has not.

6 comments:

  1. Great poem :-)It has that quasi-Haiku quality to it (I know you are fond of Haiku!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bless you!

    It is probably pollen in the air making you sneeze.

    Caroline xxx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Would a peregrine want or miss the carrot? Maybe?!

    Lucky you!

    ReplyDelete
  4. What wonderful poem! Dru....you are a treasure!

    Melissa XX

    ReplyDelete
  5. I love the poem. I'm no good at finding rhymes for words. It's a wonderful world when people are spontaneously generous.

    Where would we be without poppies?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thank you, Jo. Someone told me that I spoke in haiku, yesterday. I replied shortly...
    Thank you, Caroline. It had to be said, and you said it!
    I'm pretty certain that a peregrine would turn up its beak at a carrot, Larry. Unless it wanted to use it as a cudgel to beat a pigeon.
    Thank you, Melissa. I'm glad you liked the poem. I'm still putting off the evil day when I write something serious.
    It is wonderful, isn't it, Anji? It brightened my whole day. Without poppies, a generation of poets would have had to scratch around for their imagery. That Isaac Rosenberg, for one. (He was from Bristol, by the way...)

    ReplyDelete