First Cab Off The Rank (rev)

You’d say it crazy to see the entire event
spread out before it happened. Not the
actual affair – scenario-like graphics, each
so obvious imagination doesn’t have a role,
joined together in a succinct, if somewhat
compressed, statement of the whole.

Too late for immunity, infection had spread,
changes were wrought with scant or ready
evidence. Thus the poem I liked fades from
a scene where I might add a complimentary
thought for the poet – becomes a case of
demur, withdraw and beware.

There I see the flaw, those words writ at the
foot of it were like fawning hands of another
before me who stroked fair breasts I sought
to impress – and queered the pitch. So I say
no thanks, nor will I play with that. She’ll just
have to take the first cab off the rank.

© 26 April 2007, I.D. Carswell