prompt: a blanket poem
On Watching The Melbourne Cup With My Mother
So they all strut their stuff at first with blankets
providing name and number.
Much chatter about whose chances are better,
why the favourite is favoured.
The numbers tell only half a story. They will
leap from stalls chosen by lottery.
And they're off!!!
All this photographic technology gives us views
from every angle. Replays will
dissect a jockey's winning strategy, with shots
of the last eight hundred from above.
No-one will see what happened to the favourite,
abandoned by sharply-focussed cameras.
The favourite comes in last!!! What!!
He dies, his heart literally broken with the effort
of running long distance fast.
The source of the other fatality is hotly disputed
in daily newspapers. The words "put down"
hardly mentioned, it's the broken leg
and the waving flag that caused the death.
Those blankets told us what we thought important.
They were only the prologue
to twenty-two unfolding stories, with several
unpredictable endings.
(written November 4 due to time difference between prompt in USA and receipt of it)
I've much enjoyed all of your first six November poems. This one is my favourite, because of its depth, and the way it articulates — and develops — those sudden sobering thoughts we all had at that news.
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