2649. A wet summer

It had been a wet summer and Leslie decided it was time to go out and do battle with the overgrown lawn. His wife Rose was in the kitchen and since retirement the weather had kept them inside and they were tripping over each other’s feet.

Leslie had been mowing the grass for about three quarters of an hour when an ambulance pulled into the gate.

“You called for an ambulance?” the ambulance attendant asked.

“Not me,” said Leslie, “but with the length of grass I’ve been cutting I could just about do with an ambulance!”

The ambulance crew smiled, looked puzzled, and went on their way.

“Honey!” called Leslie from the front door. “Did you see that ambulance turn up for no rhyme or reason?”

There was no answer.

1473. Fat Ferdinand’s fate

Ferdinand was the most selfish cattle beast in the herd. For example, when the cattle were all driven through a gate into a fresh pasture, every animal would begin to eat the grass just inside the gate. Not so, Ferdinand.

Ferdinand would stroll to the far end of the field away from all the other beasts. That way he wouldn’t have to share. He had all the fresh grass in the world. Several days later, by the time the herd reached the far end of the field they would say to one another, “Where has our grass gone? How come there is no long grass here in the field? Someone selfish must have been eating it.”

That is why Ferdinand was the fattest bull in the herd (and therefore the first to go to the slaughter house).

Poem 61: It just seems that way

Swaying grass in wind
teaches me to dance in one spot.
It makes the hillside waltz
but really not.
It just seems that way.

Rise and fall of waves
teaches me to dance in one spot.
It makes the ocean tango
but really not.
It just seems that way.

Alone, I sit glued to one spot,
cornered in this old folks’ home.
He’s long past it, so they say.
He dribbles in his chair.
He wheezes in his air.
His mind’s not very clear.
His bank account is bare.
Mostly he can’t hear.
He won’t see out the year.
His end must soon be near.
There’s a bloody waiting list as long as your arm for here.

And yet

Swaying grass in wind
teaches me to dance in one spot.
It makes the hillside waltz
but really not.
It just seems that way.

To hear the poem read aloud click HERE.

1031. Sickle

Last week I was clearing the weeds and long grass along the roadside in front of my house. Would you believe? The weed-eater ran out of fuel just when there was only a little bit left to do.

In my shed there was an old sickle, one from the old days, wedged between the wall and the dwang.  I’d never used it before, and although it was a bit rusted and blunt, I thought it would do the trick.

So I’m out there cutting the grass on the side of the road, and this car stops. It’s an old man. He gets out and he says, “Son, don’t you know how to use a sickle properly?” And I said “Of course I know how to use a sickle properly.”

He takes the sickle off me and starts cutting the grass with it, with a sweeping motion away from his body, and not towards his body like I’d been doing. “You’ll do yourself some damage,” he said, “if you don’t use it properly.”

He then gets into his car and drives off. These know-alls drive me nuts. They go around sticking their noses into everyone else’s business. It really pisses me off. So I kept doing it my way because his way didn’t work properly and the old guy with a carrot up his bum annoyed the hell out of me. I could get really stuck into the grass cutting doing it my way. It was a lot faster.

Anyway, as I say, that was last week. The doctors are still not sure if they’ll have to amputate my left leg below the knee.