Pointless Connections 2016
A follow-up to ‘Disused Quarry 1956’
If smooth Alexander asked her, in his well-oiled way,
how she’d spend the money, if she won,
she’d say New York, New York.
Everyone did, didn’t they?
She’d seen the men posing on the beam,
dreamt of doing the Empire State Building,
another must-have holiday
to pack away with all the others,
plus a time-cheating selfie taken
at the base of that huge erection,
its Keuper sandstone cladding
quarried in the Wirral, England.
Post-war the formerly Roman
now disused White Freestone Quarry
had a don’t-go-near pond at the bottom
where, as a small boy, I emptied
my adolescent tadpoles
out of a fifties sweet jar
and watched them wriggle away
to enjoy being frogs in my poem
half a century later
before the quarry was filled in,
archiving privileged knowledge
under excavated rubble
from the second Mersey tunnel.
Back from New York,
she’d show off her selfie
and enhance her life by assuming her friends
would think she was the most important item
in the photo, it never occurring to her
that her friends might just notice the cladding
behind her, though, at the same time,
or any other time, not realising,
like millions of New Yorkers and millions of visitors
since the building of that building,
that they would be missing out
on each stone’s silly story of privileged knowledge.
But she’d have to win Pointless first.
…
I can see the connection to the TV programme, Gerald, but the one to the old disused quarry seems to me a bit tenuous. Now how many tourists would focus their attention to the building’s cladding or consider that the most important item in that selfie is the Wirral-quarried cladding? And why would they?
Call me thick but I don’t understand why that same selfie is ‘time-cheating’.
A bit too deep for me, sorry.
Thanks, Luigi. The connection between the quarry and the Empire State building is the stone cladding. I only say that the tourists might notice the cladding but like everybody else not know its origin or my connection with it. This is what happens – we do not know the story which each stone, rock, etc. in the world has. I, am a few Merseysiders, are perhaps the only ‘privileged’ people who know something of the cladding’s history. I do not say that the tourists might think the only important item in the selfie is the woman – she is the… Read more »
I shall never attempt to write another poem after this defeat! The point is clearly not coming across. The connections I make in the poem are all pointless. What is the point of the poem? There isn’t one. It doesn’t matter a flea’s fart where the contestant comes from. I’m hypothetising – is that the right word – that she will say New York and that will trigger my association with the ESB and the secret knowledge I have about the quarry where the cladding came from. Again I hypothetise that if she goes to NY she will take the… Read more »
But you are not thickies. As the poem is new, it may need time to marinate and then I’ll apply some tweaks. I agree we need more people commenting. I worry, however, that the old colonial schoolmaster is too severe. G
Ahhh….Gerald, there you go again. Please don’t have a hissi fit because someone does the get the meaning of life. Your words never fall on deaf ears. We all get misunderstood at times. You are one of the finest word smiths on this or any other site. Keep writing.
Mike
Ps I loved it
Hi Mike. There I go again! You’re right. Touch of the knee-jerks.Thanks for your kind words.
Gerald