I was trying to think of what it was
I had heard about woodpeckers
pecking on the sides of houses
and said they sensed
the electromagnetic field
of all the wiring in a home
and how it confused their senses
and he looked at me like I had
three heads or three extra holes
in my head and it was only later,
many days later, that I remembered,
far too late to salvage
his deteriorating opinion of my intellect,
that it was the hum of the wiring
that they heard or felt in the cavities
of their heads and mistook for the activities
of termites and weevils making holes
in the wood and I felt like twice the fool
for I knew it hadn't sounded right
when I told it first, about the
electromagnetism. I could as well have
gone and told him, “That's why I line
all my hats with foil, you know—
to keep the woodpeckers out!”
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I think perhaps we need to fill some of dee’ s holes lol, where you come out with ‘stuff’ boggles my brain 😉
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This was pulled from “real” life, fer real.
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hmm I believe’s ya 😉
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That’s why you’re a writer. Given a shadow of an idea, you flesh it out to meet the needs of the situation. It doesn’t matter if it’s true as long as it sounds true in the moment. There have been many moments (and will continue to be) in my life when this has happened. I blush. We are all feeble intellects compared to Mr. Peabody (a movie I’ve seen twice this past weekend at the request of my son).
On another note, when I lived in Tucson near the base of the Santa Catalina mountains in a home in the wilds of the Sonoran desert, a woodpecker would visit our place daily. We could set our morning alarm by the steady drilling coming from the antenna/lightning rod rising above the chimney. I miss that place. Also the early morning purring of quail, the bats swooping over the pool at dusk, the owls nesting in the saguaros. Thanks for stirring the pot!
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That’s kinda funny. The very first job I ever had, and also my first food-biz job, was at a little Italian restaurant where, due to my appearance (blond hair, bowl cut, horn-rimmed glasses) I earned the very appropriate nickname of “Sherman.” !!
Love the fluidity of words. “Truth” “Lies” “Story”
I can hear that early morning. Thanks for that.
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Aside from the stanza breaks and the quite un-urbane subject, this one reminds me of Frank O’Hara in its talkiness. Charming!
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I am humbled by and grateful for your words.
Thank you.
I think I love “un-urbane talkiness.” That sounds like me.
Pieces like this always make me wonder about the border-land between prose and poetry and the “definition” of poetry, if such a thing exists. My daughter has really got me thinking about it. She’s 8 and has been asking me that nigh-impossible to answer question, “Daddy, what IS poetry.” I think I’m glad that I can’t really tell her.
Does that make sense?
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Of course that makes sense. I’ve written on “What poetry is” several times on my prose blog. I’m not sure you’ll find an answer suitable for your daughter, but one http://signalstoattend.wordpress.com/2012/08/01/poetry-my-current-verdict/ was a response to my much older daughter taking a poetry class.
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Just put that in my reading queue. Thanks–
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