no heelers no

October in the world.
Coffee with Doctor Barn in the River Bank Cafe.
"You won't believe this," says he all jollies. "I got a phone call around midnight last night. It was from Pauline. She told me she was worried you might be about to commit suicide. Did you send her one of your depressing poems or something?"
"I did send her a fragment of verse as it happens," I answered carefully. "But I didn't intend it to have that effect. What did you do when she told you she thought I was about to top myself?"
"I told her to go back to sleep and not be annoying me," said Doctor Barn. "But what was the poem?"
I recited it for him briefly.
It ran:

"there will come an hour
some evening of wind abover urquaharts wood
some evening when the elementals of nature parody the power
the last light of dusk the life force fading from my blood
there will come an hour
i know nothing of destiny
but i know this
this is to be"

There was a stillness in the cafe after I'd finished declaiming.
I was the first to break the silence.
"Let me get this straight," sez I. "You got a phone call from Pauline saying she was worried I might be about to go croakies, and you didn't even check with me to see whether there was anything in it?"
"I was sure you wouldn't be into it," says Daktari.
Well folks.
What a pair.
Doctor Barn and my feminist cousin Pauline.
One of them thinks my poems are so bad that they're to die for. And the other one isn't too worried about the body count even from one of my poems going off accidentally.
I don't know which of them to be more offended with.