Fuming Sulphurous by Allan Lake

While out walking this morning I got
what I thought was a brilliant idea
for a poem – ‘out of the blue’
is the expression I’m trying to avoid
but so it seemed on a cloudless day.
A bit like finding a dollar on the ground
but it’s more of an I O U, unsigned.
It’s only ever once around the park,
not Cinque Terre so I trusted myself
to hold on to my tiny treasure until
safely home with pen and paper
and fertilizer known as ‘coffee’,
which is normally step two of a multi-
step mapless hike that ends in ultimate
sacrifice/submission to invisible gods.
But moments later a flock of raucous,
cussing sulphur-crested cockatoos
from Hell or wherever they live,
flew right into my left ear, settled
onto branches of my brain and
did not shut up for the many minutes
it took them to settle some argument.
Only then did they flock off
out of my right ear on their mission
to disturb some other part
of the daydreaming world.
Damnation!
That may seem an old-fashioned curse
but it’s required now. While perched
inside my head, they stole that seed
I’d been hoping to cultivate and
there was no getting it or any
imagined harvest back.
So, nothing to do,
besides fume.
Originally from Saskatchewan, Allan Lake has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton, Ibiza, Tasmania & Melbourne. Poetry Collection: Sand in the Sole (Xlibris, 2014). Lake won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp 2017 & Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Fest 2018 & publication in New Philosopher 2020. Chapbook (Ginninderra Press 2020) My Photos of Sicily.