An old man, reads old books,
On a digital screen…
While the poet looks,
At the passing scene…
Nice man turns to menace,
Table tennis, with a Chinese grip…
No crowd of words to pen this,
Nor would one word equip…
They walk the promenade, twice,
They loop the pool, backwards…
He thinks to himself, quite nice,
But at best a set of hack words.
.    Some scenes are easily sketched,
.    Freely fetched, and loosely stretched.

© Tim Grace, 10 February 2011

To the reader: Apparently, functional networks extend to about 150 people. Beyond that, it’s difficult to maintain anything but a virtual relationship. And so, by far, most people we see are strangers. As often as not we are their observers. In a closed community, such as a cruise ship, the strangers become familiar but not known. These familiar strangers become predictable; their routines are normalised, and shared circumstance they are attached to backdrop sceneries.

To the poet: I once tried writing a poem using the advertising text plastered to passing trucks on a highway. What resulted was a random accumulation of words… a traffic jam. As we watch life in passing it has its logical sequence; there is a sense of connection. Place and time give people and events their context. Take away that context and the subject loses its objective frame; might as well write about things.

loosely sketched