I empathize with the sentiment if not the actual want…
Costal Farmlet
“A man wants nothing so badly as a gooseberry farm.”
—Chekhov
I want a costal farmlet.
I desire it very much.
I saw it advertised
in the classifieds and I presume
that coastal means our land
comes right down
to the sea with the whitecaps
lashing romantically, and farmlet
means we can grow
gnarled trees on our headland
and let sheep roam. It is about cheap
enough for us if we borrow, beg
and steal, pawn a few poems, also write
a harlequin romance or two, and it’s
only 9000 miles from the place
we call home. There’s not much
of a hitch except the Immigration
would not let us stay in the country
to live in our farmlet. But still,
I want it and think we should go
look at it, right now, this moment,
while tangy sweet gooseberries glow.
“Costal Farmlet” by David Ray, from Music of Time: Selected and New Poems. © The Backwaters Press.
The farmlet in my wants resides on the side of a mountain not a sea and it’s blueberries not gooseberries that call me there. But, other than those discrepancies, this poem could be mine, not by the writing but by the desiring…
Source:The Writer’s Almanac for Wednesday, March 28th
Other links to David Ray:
- Howling Dog Press: Xray
- From Amazon.com ~ Music of Time: Selected and New Poems
