Confessions of a Lazy Poet  (Part 5)

I'm afraid I've been loitering in the cemetery once more as it's still a hotbed of inspiration and without wanting to make its acquaintance too closely just yet, I am now on nodding terms with the gravedigger's mechanical shovel parked just inside the gates.
The machine deserves my respect for doing in a few minutes
what would once have taken a couple of strong men half an hour.
I consider myself to be a 'hands on' scribbler who believes in experiencing things personally whenever possible before writing about them, so I have been itching for the opportunity to lie (for a few minutes only) in a freshly dug grave before the funeral party show up, in order to experience first hand what it feels like to be dead.
No luck as yet.
The cemetery is only a few blocks away from me and such excursions do provide a wonderfully peaceful jet lag free interlude from the seasonal Christmas bombardment without the expense of flying off to a non-Christian country.
Today there was not a twinkling fairy light or coin rattling carol singer to be
seen lurking amongst the gravestones to ambush me - in fact not a single living soul.
But as much as I'd like to butcher the season again with the sharpest poet knives I am more upset by the departure of my tame crow, Barnaby.
I can't believe he's winged off to warmer climes without so much as a farewell 'caw.'
There are other flying brethren around but they will never be as black or as shiny and I doubt they will ever wax as lyrically as good old Barnaby could. That contemptuous look from his beady eye and helpful word suggestions while I paced up and down the garden muttering lines to myself will be sorely missed.
I also feel betrayed by the weather. Most of my poetry is written early in the morning, when I can more easily draw down the day's fresh new energies. But lately it's noon before the poems will quit tugging away at my fingers, by which time that blue sky promise has morphed into the most diabolical shade of stay at home gray.
Sadly, that means there has been no opportunity for my early morning bicycle pursuit of rabbits along the canal towpath and there's nothing quite like a racing a bunny to oxygenate the brain cells, although I have yet to win.
Poetry may be a demanding way of life then - but one that should perhaps never be taken lying down.

 
Write it down!