Parent's Guide to Pets: Street poem

Thursday 4 July 2013

Street poem

Driving home, I noticed some signs on gates near to the hospital. And there was a poem.

"When I was a kid I wished no one could see me."

The experience of Becoming Aware of Existence.

Clouded memories, sensations, images and background noises,

Recordings make from a few feet from the earth.
Exhaust fumes in nostrils, the discomfort of deckchairs.

From this body that clings to me, through eye sockets I'm observing,

As strangers survey a city from upper windows of a tower block.

As a child my brother Peter and I spent the summers with grandparents, each couple having us for a week at a time. My father’s parents lived a practical life. Granddad was very good with his hands. We spent hours in his shed making all manner of wonderful toys. Viking boats, shields and swords.

One hot summer day, with parents, we sat outside on the patio for tea and Grandma’s millionaire’s short bread. The patio never seemed to make sense to me. Far too avant-garde an affair for my grandparents. My grandmother kept dead ends of soap in a plastic container, and grandfather shaved in the kitchen sink with a small mirror. This patio comprised of two hemispheres, located about 12 feet apart, each accommodating only a few people perched on chairs on the uneven surface. Two groups were formed, facing each other across the divide, like political parties fronting each other in parliament.

Years later, I pondered this incongruity and puzzled it out. As youths, my father and his brothers had a table-tennis table in the garden. Soon they had created two hemispherical bald patches on the lawn, and Granddad was sent out to find broken concrete slabs to make amends for the damage. Years later no one thought that the next generation would be left perplexed.

This is my metaphor of how the younger generation is left puzzles over meaning of existence. Some things are explained. Other things are left to be worked out through deduction.

And back to our Sunday walks....