Bake-a-yarn

Tuesday, 21 February 2023

A flash piece on the subject of Cookies

The Cookie Monster

I consume facts.

The whiff of a new topic stimulates my salivary glands, sets me drooling over my keyboard. The first bite piques. My friend tells me her son is going to Cinque Terra. I correct her pronunciation. Chin-kwa ter-re I tell her, with a rolled r sound. She doesn’t know where that is. I do. I am off. My hand reaches for cookies to supplement what I have already imbibed. I regurgitate what I know while my fingers lick and prod the keyboard in search of new facts. I download a map of the area, explain the coastal configuration that throws up kilometres of beach south of his destination. Give a vivid depiction of sardine packed beaches in high season. Talk of remote authenticity, timeless appeal, hilltop sanctuaries, peeling buildings, pastel glow. I warn of twisting cliff-edge roads and deep pocket parking fees. Recommend the Blue trail of low level difficulty requiring high stamina. Add a wiki-potted history of Genoa and Naples and warn against taking Italian public transport in July given the prevalence of industrial strike action at that time. Tell her about pizza Blanca, a local speciality and recommend Sciacchetrà, the regional wine. Find and compare great deals on Trivago. Recommend walking tours with wine tasting. Do I accept cookies? Yes. Yes. Yes. She is sated with my store of information and somewhat overloaded. I do not care.

Who wants to know all that? She has work to do, emails to send, dog to walk, cake to bake and, in desperation, the loo to get to. I follow her to the bathroom door still spouting. I am regurgitating everything I know about Hugh O’Flaherty, the Scarlet Pimpernel. Who? she asks. Why him? The Italian connection? Does it matter?

All that matters is facts, facts, facts.

Monday, 20 February 2023

On SAYING NOTHING

In deep waters here. This poem may sound a little harsh but it is one that you will all identify with and one in which you have probably been at both ends of the exchange.

The jury is out on whether it is a poem or a rant....

Forgive me...

(Not dedicated to anyone in particular but if the cap fits...)

Forgive me

If I say nothing when you call me

With your twitter tweets

Not confined

To 280 characters or less

That I hold the phone at arm’s length to your:

I told you so

I was right about that

Correct me if I’m mistaken

It just goes to show

For my silence :

On the dog park, the state of the nation,

The Derry Girls, the weather, Elon Musk

Taking over Twitter, the importance of free speech

And how it should be monitored

And my deafness to:

Somebody needs to

The government is to blame

I can’t understand it

Nobody ever thinks to…

Forgive me

If I say nothing.

It’s just that

You never listen to me

Anyway....

Wednesday, 15 February 2023

An Attempt at Rhyme

I hanker after a Road not Taken

Not Robert Frost's path in undergrowth forsaken

Though not far off and wanting wear

An uphill path, stony and bare:

According to an Oxford Definition

A person given to living in seclusion

Especially as a religious discipline

Describes the path I could have taken

I like the sound of given to

As in prone,inclined, the habit of few

Though not in my case a discipline-

But the cat is scratching the pane to get in

And the dog is stalking the door to get out

And the arrival of a certain person is about

To be, as Frost says, with famous ambivalence

The thing that will make all the difference

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44272/the-road-not-taken

Monday, 13 February 2023

On Aging

I list like a ship on my daily perambulation of the park

to port or starboard, sometimes even trimming fore or aft,

and wonder what it is that tilts a ship so...

heavy cargo, ailing sails, groaning bark?

All I know is that by the time I reach the post

recently erected by Dunlaoghaire-Rathdown Co Council

that illustrates the different types of bugs that troll our park-

the Spittlebug, the Greenshield bug, the Hairy shield bug-

I will be mast upright again, having reached the righting moment

evaded capsize or sink but still sailing into the sunset...

Thursday, 26 January 2023

On Re- reading Billy Collins..

Around about midday on Fridays, among other tasks,

I clear the mist, scoop the sea and push the mountains

at the local community centre, all while mouthing

the five healing sounds of the elements

SSSSS...CHOOO...SHHHH...HAHHH...WHOOO

with the aim of self preservation and renewal...

And I thought there were only four of them-

elements that is-

Or else one hundred and eighteen,

if you count the periodic table...

But we're talking Qi Gong here.

So every week I shake, swing and flow

in the hope of finding

what I actually find

with a lot less effort

when I read one of your poems.

Billy Collins reads a poem

Monday, 23 January 2023

Painting the Town

Nothing becomes you quite like your strutting.

You're determined to go out in style.

Not for you the drab greys and browns

that dowse my canvas.

Your choice of palette is shocking pink and ruby red

upending the head nodders,

the tut- tutters, the chin-waggers-

"She couldn't be!" I hear them say.

But inside you are

and nobody can say when...

So meanwhile, woman,

keep doing what you're doing

and paint the town red.

Monday, 16 January 2023

Resolutions

On the back of a used envelope I write, not a list of to-dos exactly,

but more like a set of military manoeuvres.

On the North facing flap- a retrieval exercise

Both belated birthday greetings

Email M

Text T

While to the South I plan to open up new neural pathways

by taking up German- again

And it being the month of Janus,the two headed Roman god,

Facing West where the sun sets I intend to review and reform

starting with an elimination of the superfluous

And Eastward where the sun rises

I will repair the rest which is, hopefully, most of me

But somewhere in the middle, about the Equator, I write Research Butterflies

for someone yesterday said that a poem was like a net to trap and contain,

by which I think they meant feelings. Words as stakes, or darts or pins?

and I thought of butterflies as you might and of poem as butterfly rather than net

not to be pinned or mounted or frozen

But to let settle, let startle, let shift and finally let fly