So, the boys and I took an off-road ramble today. This, admittedly, involved minor trespassing, since we had to climb over the place where the really persnickety guy's fence meets itself at one sharp corner. We were probably on his property for a grand total of three seconds, so I'm not too fussed about it, really. Where we ended up was completely worth it. It was really just the path between hills that had been carved by hundreds of years of run-off, but it was a place we had never gone.
Charlie was reluctant to follow me where I wanted to go, at first. He was worried about coyotes. Myself, I was looking for R.O.U.S.es. And if you don't get that movie reference, I'm sorry: there is no hope for you. And anyway, after we had defeated all the horrors of the fire swamp, we decided we could live there quite happily for some time... Wait, wrong story...
What did end up attacking us, or at least Abe, was a thorn bush. After we got him untangled, he was pretty angry with the bramble, so he gave it a good whack with the stick he was carrying. Long story short, don't whack something that can whack you back with a pricklier stick.
Aaaaaand that resulted in today's poem. I swear, I don't go looking for these things. We're just walking around, and something happens. A line pops into my head, and then a poem writes itself around that line. I'm really just incidental to the process because I have a keyboard and opposable thumbs.
Revenge
As I hiked through the winter woods
a bramble snatched my hat,
tore my coat and scratched my face,
tripped me this way and that.
When, swearing, I had freed myself,
I whacked it with a stick
and for my pains I got more pains
where I, again, got pricked.
I learnt this then: on thorn bushes
one cannot take revenge;
they will best you every time
and they need not bring friends.
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