Didn't know what to do by Kevin Jackson (thrucrit)
November 15, 2009 at 12:34AM
Naming things is what she did.
Watery vittles, country broth.
Hymns in church, crumbs of comfort.
A shoe with its leather worn thin, home.
Yells and smells and jostlings, children.
Loved it all she did, in her words, joyed in it.
Every day confusion took her company
glee welcomed her back.
What if she’d run out of numbers?
Children counted just as much,
and however many there were
every one of them had two eyes
bright enough to start a blaze.
How the sparks flitted about.
A crowd went up, she feared for a fire.
Shoe’s burn quick as any will avow.
She fell to Holy Writ
(or counting comforts as she named it)
and fixed this precept:
Blessed are the meek for their’s shall be
the Kingdom of Heaven.
Chuckles rolled about the room
as she leant on Heaven, saw clear the space
there’d be there, with vittles
and hymns to spare. Still laughing
she took grip of candle and knife.
Kissed each good night.
Kj13nov09
Shari-Lyn McArthur
Naming things is what she did.
Thrucrit, edselection
Reader Comments (10)
Kevin, this is quite excellent. The tone is rich like a whole row of oboes. The end falls slightly. Wondering if you ended at ...spare in S3?
Regardless, this is excellent work.
Last 3 lines a disappointment for me Kevin. Could end at life?
Line 20: their's = theirs
Otherwise, I have to agree with Larry: this is superb.
B.
~
I think if you cut everything after 'still laughing...' it would work, but I wasn't particularly bothered by the last few lines, except the beat is kind of seperate from the rest of the poem, maybe that's what you want?
I enjoyed it a lot, it reminded me of this news story or something I was listening to on the radio the other day about dementia, maybe you didn't mean it that way, but for me it worked perfectly.
My suggestion for the ending:
...
Chuckles rolled about the room
as she leant on Heaven, saw clear the space
there’d be there, with vittles
and hymns to spare. Still laughing
(a labour of love as she called it)
to their Kingdom her meek did go.
Wow, big thanks Larry for those words. You have me blushing! Hugely grateful.
B, big thanks to you too. You're both right on the ending. I let it run away. Have tweaked now - see what you think.
k
Big thanks Erika and Shari... you'll see I've played with the ending to make it tighter.
Great to hear this connect so strongly.
k
Kevin, I posted an update with what I think you were after in the formatting. How does that look?
Enjoyed this - nicely understated.
You don't need the apostrophe in Shoe’s.
I think here
Every day confusion took her company
glee welcomed her back.
you could do with some punctuation rather than relying on the line break to split the sentence.
Ros
dear Kevin
my eye was delighted by the change in formatting that Shari-Lyn
constructed......made the read much more pleasurable.
a warm smile
silent lotus
big thanks for that shari - yes!! that was what i was after and i agree, SL, it runs so much more agreeably to the eyes.
thanks ros, agree with you about needing the punctuation and how prescient of shari to do just that
such wonderful collaboration
and very big thanks to the editor/s who put this on the front page, i'm deeply flattered
k