Once more, my mind is as empty as a dead teasel head.
I’m sure it has plenty of potential spaces for ideas, but there really doesn’t seem to be anything in them. And just at the moment it seems unlikely that there ever will be again.
Even the next poetry reading that I am appearing at has me stumped: the theme is sport and I really don’t have much in my files that is in the least appropriate.
But that won’t stop me, of course: I doubt very much whether I’ll be inspired to write anything new, but I’m pretty sure I can come up with some tenuous connections.
The teasels in the photo may be dried up and spent, but they have reminded me of going fishing with my uncle, many, many years ago. I wonder if fishing counts as sport. If it does, I could probably include this brief piece in the reading:
The one that got away
What was caught on that fishing-line
of light held taut between the trees,
pulled silent,
slow,
lower
and lower
as the sun sank?
If fishing isn’t sport, well, cricket certainly is. And I have plenty of crickets in my poems. This piece even has ‘sport’ in the title, so I’m pretty sure it will be acceptable:
Summer sport
After a busy evening
listening to cicada orchestras
and dancing with
grasshoppers
through the weeds,
the cat comes home.
He sniffs the bowl of kibble
then looks up, looks
dissatisfied, as if to say,
“dried cat food’s
just
not
cricket.”
I’ve just looked up ‘inspiration’ on thesaurus.com and am slightly taken aback to see ‘reality’ listed as an antonym. Does that imply that most people live their lives without inspiration?
I’m not sure, but I think, perhaps, however dry and uninspiring the situation seems, however hazy and washed-out the world, it may be possible to make a connection that pulls things into focus, even if it isn’t always possible to restore the rich life and activity of summer.
don't confuse the narrator 