Writing to a friend, Alix, a journalist who escaped a fate worse than death in Uganda, when I just couldn't find the word, 'shameless'. The sentence wanted to be, "The children went to bed with just a few bribes, I'm .... " I had to substitute, "without compunction" but I was curious. Where had the word gone? How many more have vanished without trace and I don't even know it yet?
I decided it was useless to worry about it: instead I chose to make a game of it .. Reckless ?
Lacking in moral fibre?
I went all around the houses. Or kept fishing. Both.
As is the way of these things the word came back in a eureka moment in the bath. Now there's another thing:some autonomous programme deep beneath my consciousness was bevearing away until, BINGO! I wrote a poem about it.
Shameless
I put my hand in the sack and
Realised some of my words were missing!
What now? I thought, observing this
Peculiar phenonemum with
Concern and curiosity.
Phew! How reassuring!
The ones I wanted for this
Particular poem
Are STILL HERE.
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