Category: poetry

roost, rooster, roostest

I first came across the word “palimpsest” years ago, when I was training to teach English as a foreign language: in one of the classes we were given a list of words that we were not expected to know and asked to chat with a partner and guess their meanings.

Presumably, the idea was to simulate the stress suffered by the students we would encounter once we qualified, but, of course, our situation was vastly different as we were all native speakers and there was really no great pressure to get the answers right, anyway.
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home to roost

In the Chinese calendar, the year of the rooster starts today, 28th January 2017, so it seems a good reason to have some cockerels, roosters and chickens on the blog this weekend.

The photo at the top was taken at the Bristol Balloon Festival some ten years ago. I feel it’s a bit cartoonish to go with this poetry vignette of dawn breaking in the Spanish pueblo where I used to live, but I don’t seem to have many photos on file that are right for the topic.
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auguries

I’ve been thinking about the presidential inauguration and wondering if I might be able to work a neat pun into this post. Something based on the prefix in being combined with the root augur – that the inaugural can’t augur well.

But that seems a little contrived, so let’s move swiftly on and talk about poetry.

The last two inauguration ceremonies – and, frankly, the only two I’ve really paid much attention to, presumably because of the live reporting via the internet – have both included poets reading their work; but it turns out poems have featured in only five presidential inaugurations.
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must be nuts

I mentioned yesterday that I was up early enough on Friday to take a photo of the overnight snow before the sun came up and melted it. In fact, that was the third day of the week that I had to be on the very first bus of the morning.

Then, yesterday, which was Saturday and might therefore be supposed to be a little more relaxed, I was at the station soon after 8am and heading off to yet another early meeting. So much for the freedom of running my own business.
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just in case

This being England, we never really know whether the winter will bring snow or floods or just days and days of interminable grey.

I admit I was delighted that Thursday night brought a sprinkling of snow. It was gone within a few hours and, of course, that may be all we have this winter. So, as I was out early enough yesterday morning to take a suitable photo, I will re-post this poem, in case I don’t get another opportunity:
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