GHOSTLY

This morning’s wind is a steady

twenty-five miles per hour, with

gusts to thirty. Even with the

windows closed, I can hear it

whistle through brittle branches

laden off and on with starlings

like black fruit. They murmur

out across the pasture and their

amoebic flow tends to jerk

sideways when they are ambushed

by a random burst of bluster before

they pepper a field that has not

been plowed for almost a year.

I watch them dodge behind

stobs and tufts hoping to find

a morsel of lost grain. Out here

where reality is a simple thing,

I have to wonder at the electronic

intrusion into my beauty?

Why is it every talking head on the

television is required to exaggerate

and lie when the simple truth

would be better? The predicted

disaster of a late March blizzard

is a tiny blip of white I can catch

only in a sideways glance before

its solitary flake pirouettes into

nothing.

But I’ll take sweet

comfort here in my bungalow

where the heat is warm enough,

and the kitchen promises a hot

breakfast as soon as I make it.

My own eggs, over easy,

smoked sausage and a smashed

potato I’ll set here on my desk

to eat alone with my thoughts

in the quiet you have left me

in your absence.

Reviews

[Lorry]

I was once told that every tale has 3 things in comment, a beginning a middle and an end. So I would like you to keep that in mind during my thoughts on your thought that led to this tale. Most people would call it a review, but I prefer to call it thinking out loud.
Verse one led me to happy, thinking of listening to the wind and perhaps feeling it too. A very suitable topic for a Sunday read, which usually lead to thoughts of relaxing and comfort, but then it moves to an intrusion in your beauty and I'm starting to think it looks like rain clouds on the horizon, and thoughts begin to sway in sinister fashion, as I begin to worry that I have been coerced into reading a sinister plot of the plight of our hungry avian friends, that I was simply not ready for on a Sunday morning, with the sun shining, which is too rare an event to ponder during such a pleasant and unexpected day.
Then in verse two, I was nodding so vigorously that I thought I'd give myself whiplash. I think the reason they are all prone to exaggerate is simply this, extremes sell and bullshitters like to get attention by promoting their thoughts as definitive, when they look like their head would explode if you gave them more than one type of beverage to consider. It might actually be fun to watch these folk try to choose a coffee from the never ending selection of your local coffee emporium... But that might just be my wishful thinking when someone who thinks they are an expert on anything starts demanding I have to take them seriously. (phew! Can't believe I got through that part without mentioning Trump... Ooh!)
And then we come to verse three, with me getting all excited at the mention of a cooked breakfast, because I only had strawberry crisp cereal, which is where all the strawberries that are too ugly to live go to die. (I should really change my cereal choices about a bit) But then you get all Hitchcockian on my a*s (it's a word, because my spellchecker says so) as you leave me hanging onto my chair as I am shockified at what the story was all about, all along by your heartbreaking last line.
So, as I follow this thinking out loud/ review thing to its conclusion, I should tell you that I liked this a lot and was impressed at the adventure you took me on had more twists than a Hollywood heist movie and I shall award it 9 out of ten.
But more importantly, why the hell didn't my spellchecker recognise shockified as a proper word? 😊

[Vol]

Lorry,
Thanks, man... it is always fun when the response is as good as the poem or better, even.
Some folks say "I really liked this one," and leave it at that. Others say, "Great imagery, and voice," whatever that's supposed to mean... The best respond out loud with what it feels like to be captured. The terrifying ones do an academic deconstruction... but I like those as well.
Really do enjoy and appreciate your always thoughtful responses.
Vol

[Lorry]

I quite like the academic deconstruction, it sounds like the academic has wandered into the sequel to the TEXAS chainsaw massacre.
And why the hell did spellchecker cap TEXAS?
I think spillchucker is having an identity crisis 😊

[Vol]

Lorry,
If you want a cool and rather intriguing study, read up on Deconstructionism, a philosophical, analytical philosophy that began in the late sixties that has become the core of current academic, political and media methodology. In a nutshell, everything is judged by its flaws, even if it has only one. As an example, one of the most brilliant of America's founders was Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence, and helped draft the United States Constitution, is known today for only one thing. He owned slaves, and fathered a child by one of them.

[Lorry]

I have taken a note of it, and shall. Thanks. 😊

[Ken Simm.]

This hit me right where it hurts. Especially that last line. I can empathise here so much. Especially living where I do as well.
But then again I am looking out now across my loch in the Summer sunshine. The dogs are crying for the chicken I bought them as a treat and its not that bad at all.
I lovely poem ,so well structured and that surprising ending just completes it.