What ails a cuckoo ?
What ails a cuckoo ?Who sees through the blinds?
What is the colour of rain in the gutter ?
The size of a sigh ?
The square root of everything
Minus a mile ?
What are you looking for
Under the chair ?
What will you do when you find it’s not there ?
Where are you going
And how will you see ?
And why is the thunderstorm
Under a tree ?
What is the distance
From here to next week ?
And why does a hummingbird
Flutter and squeak ?
What flies in a puddle
And swims though the air
What has six legs with hooves on
And spikes in its hair ?
With eyes that are bluey
With edges of red
That sleeps in a shoebox
That’s kept in the shed
That shrieks in the darkness
And sleeps in the day
That frightens the neighbours
And keeps cats away
Out of Sync
I think it was last Thursday that I realised I was out of sync - I know the symptoms well enough from sewing machines - the timing goes and before you know it the top thread is just not looping through the bottom one - or is it the other way round ?
It is a bit embarrassing, really, but though I have made a living with this sewing machine for more than twenty years now from my attic room in Greater Tichfield Street, taken it apart quite often to remove the fluff that builds up and to put oil into all the moving parts to ensure that it keeps working smoothly - for all that, I still don’t really understand how it works at all. I mean - I know how to use it, of course I do ... I just don’t understand how the top thread gets under the bottom one to make the stitches - it just baffles me.
Mostly of course, I don’t think about how it works until it goes wrong - and that was what happened on Thursday. There was a pigeon in the bathroom which was startling enough but when it hopped onto the towel rail, it made the sound of a two stroke motorbike engine starting up. And then it sang a couple of verses of “ The yellow rose of Texas " in a tinny voice
Then as I looked down into the street which was now flooded with bright green liquid to a depth of at least three metres if not more, another pigeon crashed into the wall of the building and split open like a chocolate egg, scattering rose petals down into the choppy green.waves of the oncoming storm.
Oh good - I thought - it’s not just ME then
The Persecutions
It's so long since I’ve been able to leave the house in daytime without being attacked by hummingbirds - they are an absolute plague these days
On balance, I prefer the bats that patrol the perimeter at night - at least they squeak so they don’t creep up and surprise you - and they don’t have those needle sharp beaks . Or for that matter the collective malice of the hummingbirds
Why don’t we leave ? You may be thinking - try to get to the coast ? See if there are any more of us left ? Take a chance ? Don’t think I haven’t thought of it - I mean - sometimes it seems that anything would be better than just waiting here and being persecuted by anything that runs or flies
We used to have a car - we still do - but we haven't had the gas for it for years and the way it has rusted, I think it might need more than gas to get it going. Anyway it has a family of raccoons living in it now so I don’t go near it - the last thing I need is a raccoon bite festering on my leg.
Sister Amy has never recovered her wits since she had an accident last Fall - she says she was stampeded by an elk but there were no footprints
I wonder if anyone will ever see this diary
Postcard
Where are you now - I am here
Where can you go to ? I can go anywhere
How do you travel ?
On the wings of a gull
On the tail of a cat
Or the fluff of a seed on the breeze
Or the roll of a galleon on the high seas
How do you speak ?
In the tongue of a toad
In the rattle of rain on the road
Where are you live ? In the shell of a snail
In a world within walls
In a room without doors
And I’m sending this postcard from Here
Anita Greg 19/05/2020