
Autumn is just about at an end now. Winter is creeping in - we had a bit of a frost here this morning. I wore two pairs of socks and inserted woolly liners into my boots. This photo is what we see out our windows - taken about six weeks ago, the colours are even deeper now, and some trees are just about bare.
Hey! It's Poetry Thursday today !
The poem below is about autumn at our place. It was written about a year ago.
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inside outside
Stumbling, a late fly
cracks its head
on glass. It wants to go back
outside into a world of orange
where the silver birches
have turned
and an immobile wind-machine
does not, the toy farmer bent
and crazy to crank up
the wooden tractor
as becalmed as the two cats
lying stretched-out inside
on sun-slabs, underbellies exposed
as if they still trust
summer to return
and every so often
one of them purring suddenly,
like a lost aeroplane.
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And below you'll find a photo of the wind mobile mentioned in the poem - we call the hapless farmer, destined to never crank up the tractor, Trev (short for Trevor ... a common male name for my generation, and a bit of a joke-name for New Zealand farmers.)
Maybe the wind machine is a bit cheesy, a bit novelty-folk-art-ish, but I like it. I like the way it quietly rumbles in the wind and the way Trev tries so hard to start up the tractor, a grim tilt to his mouth. But I like it most of all because it reminds me of my childhood on the farm.
