Have you ever seen a mind thinking?
A couple read this line out loud from a poem I have taped to the wall in the shop, bobbing about, delighted to find a poem on the wall and looking at each other with amazed, hilarious eyes.
(They are side by side, leaning in, shoulders touching, experienced and fearless).
Out loud, they read it to each other:
Have you ever seen a mind
Thinking?
It’s like an old cow
Trying to get through the pub door
Carrying a guitar in its mouth;
Who are they reading it to? Not to me. They haven’t even noticed me. It’s to each other. They sway about and laugh and keep reading: HA, HA, HA, this is brilliant!
I agree; it’s Chris Wallace-Crabbe, and it is brilliant. It’s just that nobody ever noticed it before. They turned around, and said to me, we like your bookshop!
Have you ever seen a mind
thinking?
It’s like an old cow
trying to get through the pub door
carrying a guitar in its mouth;
old habits keep breaking in
on the job in hand;
it keeps wanting
to do something else:
like having a bit of a graze,
for example…
And they keep reading, down, down, and down, dropping through the poem, which, being Chris Wallace-Crabbe, is astonishing and endless, right to where the cow gets through the door but doesn’t know how.
Because, how do minds (with guitars) get through doors?
Anyway, the cow has to know that it’s harder with a piano.
It’s harder with a piano.
When they read this, the delicious middle line, the wife shrieks, and says, briiiiiilliant. She looks at her husband: oh, don’t you remember? I do.
Introspection by Chris Wallace-Crabbe
Absolutely wonderful…the poem, the experience, your telling.
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Thank you very much. So good to read comments like that. Because it’s so ordinary, what I write about.
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Life is in the details. The way you tell about your observations is very interesting.
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Another wonderful story 🙂 thanks for sharing them. Your portraits of the customers always put a warm smile on my face
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Thank you Bella, and I have to say that your posts do the same for me.
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That line will stay with me!
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Me, too 🙂
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You truly excel in making the ordinary extraordinary. Or maybe a better way of putting it: revealing the extraordinary in the ordinary. Thanks for sharing!!
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Thank you very, very much 😊
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Thank you for introducing me to this poem. It seems kind of remarkable that this couple is the first to notice it in your shop, and enjoy it so much😊.
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I know – but the poem is quite long. Browsers will read the shorter pieces I have on display but often pass over this one because of its length. They just want to get into the books!
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