We who with songs beguile your pilgrimage / And swear that Beauty lives though lilies die, / We Poets of the proud old lineage / Who sing to find your hearts, we know not why ... (James Elroy Flecker)

20.5.22

Gratitude Journal

I’m glad I have a cat

now that I no longer

hug my friends. 


I’m glad I’d rather

read books

than go to parties.


I’m glad I live with

the Internet

and my smart TV.


I’m glad I never

have to go out –

I can shop online.


I’m glad there was time

to get over the fires

before the pandemic hit.


(Except of course for those 

still homeless, still having

nightmares. Ah well.)


When recurring floods

keep wrecking others’ houses,

I’m glad I live on a hill.


Thankfully, I don’t believe

those who say these times

are separating us.



Written for Friday Writings #27: Watching and Witnessing at Poets and Storytellers United.


Slightly belated note: Well, this poem is an epic fail! As revealed by the first few comments it has received. I was going to wait and see if anyone got it, but it has become obvious that the fault is mine, so I had better confess. I meant it to be ironic, as the speaker gradually reveals the ways in which she has become withdrawn and selfish without even realising it. Too subtle? Or is it that because I used facts from my own life, everyone assumed the persona was me, took it at face value and couldn't credit the underlying attitude I was trying to show?


39 comments:

  1. I'm glad you showed us so.many safe substitutes and safe activities. I read that being social can add two or three years to ones life. Social media was one way, an affectionate pet relationshop to exchange helps in this area.
    Going to bed at nine helps the brain as well. These things were in the latest AARP magazine.
    I'm glad you are letting me comment anonymously as google in trying to own the world has shut me out even though I am signed in.
    Marja is my latest casualty, I cannot leave her my comment. I feel badly about that but I can't help one bit. I had been holding google off but in adding a computer signed me in to a fictitious account that I had been keeping at bay. I'll probably switch to Wordpress (I have an account, no blog).
    Jim

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    1. Anonymous commenting is fine so long as you add your name in the text! (Which you do.)

      I have been fantasising about changing to Wordpress myself, as Google gets more and more annoying. I too have an account but no blog there.

      As for this poem, see my reply to Penelope, below. I don't know if the change will work. I have evidently been much too subtle. Damn!

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    2. PS Please see the note I have now added.

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  2. Your words make it clear: There is much to be grateful for ... thank goodness for cats, books and hills!

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    1. I've just changed a word in the last line, which I hope will make it much clearer. Maybe I should change the title as well.

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    2. Please see the note I have just added.

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    3. Haha ... Rosemary, After reading the note, all I can say is "ah well" and sorry I missed the cleverly worded and very astute irony. :)

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    4. Don't worry – you and everyone else, until I wrote my note!

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  3. I love that you listed gratitudes... the little things, the unexpected things, the things that defy that onward march to dystopia.

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    1. Right, Thanks – but please see the note I have now added.

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  4. I've been struck by how well some of us have risen to the occasion and resisted becoming de-humanized by it all.

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    1. Yes indeed, that's very true. I did however mean to indicate that the speaker of this piece has fallen into the trap – see the Note I have now added.

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  5. AND, dear Rosemary I totally missed the irony. Nonetheless, it's a most delightful write. (I would never have thought you possessed even an ounce or gram or whatever of selfishness)

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    1. Somehow, I always come across as sweet and nice, lol. Used to annoy the hell out of me when I was a teenager! I guess I'm not very nasty at that, but I think most of us have at least a smidgen of selfishness.

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    2. I have never thought you came across as sweet and nice:) Northern Rivers People don't do sweet and nice LOL

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    3. Don't forget, I grew up in Tassie! LOL.

      Though you're right about NR people: what we do instead is swing into action to help others when needed, with a strong sense of community.

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  6. Heartbreaking, especially the way the speaker doesn't quite realize how much the times are affecting them (and not in the best of ways). The opening bit made me sad. The closing made me sigh.

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    1. Thanks, Magaly. Ha, what I want to know is, would you have realised or did you have to re-read after seeing the Note? I have now tweaked this yet again. A work in progress! I'll also be investigating it with my offline writers' group next time we meet.

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  7. I'm afraid it is getting easier and easier to do the things you've listed. I know they are bad for me, but my introversion just keeps getting worse as I age. I'm not a hermit but I'm awfully comfortable in my shell.

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    1. Exactly!

      I have now slightly rewritten it yet again, including putting back the last line to how it originally was. But I think this piece needs more work yet.

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    2. Hermits are not selfish. To survive they have no choice

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    3. And therein lies the problem. That survival strategy may result in a habit of learned selfishness ... and yet, what are we to do?

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    4. My current strategy is to make a distinction between trying to appease the endless energy-drain cravings of extroverts (I don't) and help people with actual survival needs. It works as long as I remind myself that extroverts are hateful, fear-driven, bitter, incomplete little souls that can't return human love, or even come as close as the cats do.

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    5. I don't exactly know why but your commnt about extroverts made me laugh.

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  8. Amen Good one Still so many things to be grateful for

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  9. I enjoyed your poem and your good fortune,because I assumed it was autobiographical and I know you live alone....so a guardian angel must be looking after you :)

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    1. Well yes, the good fortune IS autobiographical...and so is the insidious withdrawal and isolationism.

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    2. PS Yes, I have always been well looked after from 'upstairs'.

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  10. Your narrator reminds me of the song in the musical South Pacific about having to be taught to hate and fear before it’s too late.

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    1. Hmm, that was more about conditioning from childhood on. The present separating is more as a result of circumstances difficult to deal with – hard to resist, in a different way.

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  11. The poem tells me that the writer is being withdrawn, and is fine with living by himself/herself. It looks autobiographical, because it is saying things we know about you. The irony in the last lines is lost because we cannot see you as someone selfish and cut off from the world.
    I think it's all right to be selfish (okay, a little, and on occasions) because it's a survival instinct.

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    1. Ah, many thanks for that useful analysis. It helps me understand that, for the irony to work, I'd have to rewrite it in 3rd person and/or with a more fictionalised scenario. (It's been an interesting exercise altogether, especially since I opened up about what I was trying for.)

      Sometimes our survival strategies become dangers in themselves – but that's a big subject which probably deserves a more in-depth write.

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    2. Irony and sarcasm is already difficult to write in prose, let alone poetry. I am not saying this is a bad poem, far from it. It is showing most of the major incidents and events of these present times.
      Writing about survival and its strategies would require its own book of poetry. :)

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  12. Gladness will get people far in this world. Thanks for the gladsome reminder!

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  13. Not for a minute did I believe this persona was yours! I love this poem.

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