Scrimshanker

 Several busy days over the last week, plus the mini-trauma of a morning having my cataracts examined - all adding up to last night being a night of restless sleep.   So today I am weary.   I just feel like sitting about doing very little.   Watching World Gymnastics - such brilliant young men and women launching themselves into thin air, trusting their skill to stop them falling headlong in a heap on the mat.  Such elegance.   Yet watching them is not relaxing.   The possibility of falling heavily is never far away.

Trawling through 'rubbish' that has accumulated in my computer I came across this poem I wrote a few years ago for The Poetry Bus.   This is just how I feel today:

Scrimshanker.

Today the dust lies thick

as the sunlight falls on the shelf.

It also falls on the apple-blossom

on the tree by the window.

I go out - touch the blossom -

smell the scent of Spring;

watch the honey bees

-models of work and efficiency.

The dust lies thick.

 

Yesterday the weeds were crowded in the garden:

chickweed, groundsel, fat hen,

the ubiquitous dandelion.

I bend to weed -

touch the yellow flowers -

miniature golden suns all over the garden.

Count the heads. 

I cannot destroy

a hundred suns.

Someone should clean the windows;

sunshine shows up the smears

- it shines on the cobwebs

of fine gossamer -

threads that shimmer and 

tremble in the breeze.

The busy spider is

weaving his way across the web.

I fetch my sketchbook.

I need to capture the beauty

on the page.

(Scrimshanker - an avoider of work)