journal of a writing man
Work in Progress
Unwanted knowledge
Last year, when autumn spattered savage pigment
across the trees, a scientist, eager to educate,
explained to me the precise chemical mechanism
whereby leaves change their colour and fall to the ground.
I hadn't asked, and did not want to know
but he seemed to think I needed the facts.
"I shall do my best to forget this," I said
and wrote the same sentiment in my notebook.
Since then bare-branched winter has scribbled
twig-twisted messages over the page; leaf-bubbling
spring splashed new green scripts there, and summer
bleached it of all but the truths I have witnessed.
Now autumn has returned, the trees blaze, yellow
and red, orange and purple, and fallen leaves
lie in new Joseph's coat-heaps on the ground,
and I have forgotten the scientist's how and why.
John Bailey
Somerset, October 2002
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