CELESTIAL VISITOR

I’m visiting from outer space

assessing how the human race

responds to challenges of virus

in ways that truly may inspire us.

I’m puzzled as to what’s at issue

necessitating toilet tissue.

I’ve seen shoppers with bent backs

lugging multidozen packs.

Is the paper to protect

From a diarrhoeal side effect?

Does coronavirus, now about,

also disrupt the sleeping gut?

Sadly, I can make no sense

of this elaborate defence.

No clue.  I cannot understand.

I’ll fly back home – and wash my hand.

Koala

She’s in the canopy now.

The ground, dry for years,

has given up:

flames are laughing

up and down the land.

As she climbed

her child fell.

There’s another kind of thunder now –

the rain should slake

the fire’s thirst –

then the search for food

and shelter can begin.

The Splash

This painting, by David Hockney,

sold for twenty-five million –

so bright

but snap-frozen of feeling.

I see something disappearing.

It sprang from the springboard –

perhaps the lost lover of the painter –

pushed into oblivion

by a perpetrator

who retreats south-east;

or maybe it’s that elusive thing called meaning.

Does he who bought the painting

understand the price of everything –

so much for water, this for sky –

and the value of nothing? 

Surfer's Tension

This bright summer morning

at sea, I kneel,

contemplating

which to choose –

this one or that –

the best wave to propel me,

to shallow water

and the shore.

I’ve come seeking solace,

escape from the tension

of pressing choices –

jobs, friends, family –

of responsibility versus freedom.

Waves of indeterminate strength

and direction surround me – foreign.

I’m not strong enough.

Then forces of circumstance take over:

my contemplation is drowned,

overturned by a dumping wave.

Challenges splash like freezing water.

How to survive, how to regain my board?

But then I’m off, racing to the shore,

a sailboat in a gale,

but no longer with a worry in the world.

First Aid

Ambivalence is a euphemism: 

I felt I had been injected  

with the juice of an Amazonian creeper 

that accelerated ageing.

How could I have come to this 

and not yet sixty? 

“It’s hereditary,” the audiologist said. 

“Blame your father”.  

Sure, but he was dead, 

These memorial ‘mini-chines’ 

would inhabit my ears for years.

They made it easier to hear voices,

but hearing aids,

like nasal hair, 

add nought to intimacy.

Within a month 

I lost one, uninsured –

what a dollar shock.

Now using my fourth, 

the cost keeps going up. 

The technology will be perfect by the time I die. 

Solar Panel

In choosing nine members to consult,

the Sun considered the political disposition

of the principal planets,

and took account of the fractious

and frequently suicidal asteroid belt. 

Each of the nine members of the panel

was unique in its/his/her requirements

for life support – but by evolution

each had arrived

at similar stellar intelligence.

The panel was convened

to consider the fate of Earth. 

Basically, the Sun was over

the dissolute behaviour

of the myriad human ants 

and their unreflective scurrying,

impervious to advertising

urging them to spend more time

sitting thinking in the sun

sans iPhone.

A consensus settled on the use 

of two dedicated asteroids

suicide bombers that would blast

obscuring clouds of dust,

freezing the planet on impact,

cleansing the Earth of humans.

New life forms might emerge

and perhaps

not make

such a mess.  

“Worth a try,” the sun said,

calling for volunteers.

Escargot Cargo

I asked Jeeves,

“Why so slow today?”

“Well, sir,” he replied,

“It’s not the traffic, as you see.

The fuel injection line is sick

and try as I might,

I can’t whip this car

to gather speed.”

If I had wanted a machine

that rode at walking pace

I’d have bought a rickshaw

or an absurd micro,

not a Mercedes-Benz.

 “So,” I said to Jeeves,

 “An infection in the injection?

This car’s but two weeks on the road.”

“There are reports,” Jeeves replied, “that a tiny snail,

Xerolenta obvia by name, sought asylum,

from Germany, stowed its

hermaphroditic family in a shipment

of Mercedes-Benz, then found its way –

or lost its way more likely –

into our fuel injection system.”

I pondered on

a nautical analogy. 

Deep divers caught with

nitrogen in their blood,

surfacing too fast,

un-dissolve it:

then bubbles of gas

obstruct and slow them down.

Perhaps the snail, I thought,

might resemble a bubble

in the fuel line –

an automotive embolus –

a case of Mercedes bends?