Subject: screaming heebies
From: Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Date: Thu May 31 2001 - 02:25:56 GMT
As Bishop Kozusko pointed out long ago, the further
off-topic a mail wanders the more stimulating & worthwhile
it tends to become. Thank God, then, for Cecilia’s roamings
in the gloaming on the subject of poppies.
I don’t doubt I’ll be told there are yellow poppies, pink poppies,
perhaps even tartan poppies. But as a poetic image, the one
thing a poppy is not is PALE red. ‘A pale-red gossamer mask
made out of poppy petals’ is what we bowmen call a boss shot,
emitting the silvery resonance of a wooden baton hitting a concrete
breeze-block. Far from evoking associations with displaced injuns,
it confirms the tale of the Laughing Man as just another of
the millions of flat footed yarns that used to be churned out -
& presumably still are - for the illiterate zillions of comic readers
everywhere. (And for Crissake, no essays, pulleze, on the values
of pop culture ...)
I’m also grateful for the natural history of the poppy. But it
was my distinct impression that the fields of France were deep
in poppies long before the enormities of 1914. After all, many
Monets mack a muckle.
There are other places where poppies mark the last stand of dying
soldiers.
The wind blows in across the plain from the sea & out on the flat
places of the ramparts the grasses & the wild flowers bend in the wind.
The poppies are like showers of fresh blood. The stones bake
under the sun with the small sounds of summer. On one of them
a lizard waits, unmoving. It is cool & pleasant out of the sun &
the wind, resting under the wall in the shade of one of the gates
of the city.
Where am I?
Scottie B.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b25 : Mon Jun 25 2001 - 13:56:10 GMT