This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin (Don't Google it!)

With some reticence I must share with you all a thought. A seemingly innocuous phrase – one that I both use and hear with predictable regularity – has taken a new, possibly sinister, turn of late.

“When the baby comes.”

I am not entirely certain what it is about the expression that chills me, but increasingly it resembles an ominous message dripping with menace.

“Things will be different... When the baby comes.”

“Are you all set for... When the baby comes?”

“How do you think that Henry will react... When the baby comes?”

I am staring to think that this young person who enters our home will present itself like Heathcliff the foundling, think of all the joy that he bought to Wuthering Heights!

That said, I always like the support the underdog, and I am the youngest of two in my family, so I could well pick this one as my favourite.

I just hope that it is not a dud. Or bald. And I'd like it just a tad more quiet than Henry please.

But damn it, you can't yet tick these things of when you place your order (yet). Time will out, and with just nine weeks left on the clock I guess we won’t really know until when the baby comes.

Comments

Dan said…

Wow the light is just fantastic! Great colors. Meanwhile, around here the temps are over 90f and humidity is well over 80%

6 June 2008 at 12:13

Dina said…

Golden light and trees.
Here in Israel many are in the habit of saying ". . . when the Messiah come." Messiah, baby, same thing, no?

6 June 2008 at 18:32

Kris McCracken said…

Although the last couple of days have been a little warmer, most mornings have been around five or six degrees as I arrive in town in the morning.

Dina, I'm not sure whether the new baby will be the new Messiah. Perhaps, but that will upset Henry!

12 June 2008 at 08:31

Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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