I’ve only desired to light old lamps with young wicks
(the tongues of flame must be blinking hard with vigilance)
Across dark, mildewed alcoves that smell of ink —her writing ink —
But one thing led to the other, and the ink I
Found froze in my eyes, the bottle instantly petrified among desert ruins.
I searched, from my village to Nantucket, borrowing
The courage of voyaging storms, seeking earnestly her quill feather,
Just to caress her pretty face with it.
But the power of distance arrested me midway and warned me
Of the dangers of costly adventures.
I hankered after a trained parrot —an amanuenses of note—
With less brilliant plumage,
Electrifying elocution,
To detect to me the protocols of her language.
But that, too, failed.
The parrot was either born mute or chose to be.
I did all I could? to seek, to find, to locate, to identify items
Belonging to her —bric-a-brac of a telling age.
And then there were none.
Her first time on a board,
was February 1922,
at Muizenberg Beach, South Africa,
then again, in August too,
the lady surfed Honolulu,
Hawaii, where,
by Duke Kahanamoku,
there she may have been taught,
and in Waikiki lost her shorts.
Who would have thought,
of all the girls
in the whole wide world,
she was the sort to shoot the curl.
Tho' a novel way to spend the day,
no crime this time, yet still a mystery,
was the surfing passion of Agatha Christie.
England’s Dame Agatha Christie
wrote novels with plots often twisty.
Best-selling fiction writer of all time,
her Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot solved many a crime.
I discovered Agatha Christie, the author, when I was eleven.
I started out with “And then there were none”
after seeing it made into a move “The Ten Little Indians”.
None of her other books seemed quite so over the top fascinating.
But, I kept reading them because she had a thrilling way with words.
And I had a love of reading mysteries and biographies.
when autumn’s last but long exhale
left mists of winter in its trail
her thoughts turned to the past to look
at greenway and the paths she took
where reading signs inside her skies
she'd dream up deaths and alibis
along the short cuts through the wood
with thoughts of stabbings and of blood
while hemlock often made her think
of slipping coniine inside drink
then with the breathless views behind
a choking often came to mind
though with the river dart in view
her thoughts would turn to drowning too
and passing by the greenway bell
she'd sound out bludgeoning as well
then muse once at the greenway gates
of ordeals, follies, pigs and fêtes
before she'd vanish through her door
to ‘kill’ some time and write some more.
Behind a chair
Below a desk
with my bare feet on a wall, in my flannel pajama or a wet swimming suit,
With my hands on my peanut butter and jelly toast,
marmalade, not cherry or anything else
Next to an ocean, ignoring the smell,
Lying in a hammock or in the grass, even on a sandy gritty beach towel.
Listening to children’s giggles, being dripped on
by wet swimming suits running past
I can devour a pile of books.
History, science, animal facts, jokes, limericks, Dr. Seuss, Shel Silverstein, Coleridge, Poe.
When one grabs me and throttles me to pay attention I am lost….
I am no longer a mere mortal.
I am in a microscope, under a kitchen floorboard, in a tulip’s leaf,
I am a faery, a T-rex, a Stormtrooper, a police detective.
In a treehouse,
High above my neighbors, not hearing them at all,
Yet subconsciously hearing everything,
I learned to be a book worm, reading Agatha Christie first….
Written 3-08-19
Contest: The Bookworm Poetry Contest Sponsor: Kai Michael Neumann
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