THE LADY AT THE LAKE

 

Sitting on a bench at lakeside.

A woman emerges from the mist.

"Are you the poet?" she enquires.

I look up from my dispute with Cartman swan who is trying to gnaw my elbow off through the anorak.

"Have you read my poems?" I enquire hopefully while Cartman moves to intercept a duck who's strayed too close.

"No," sez she.

"Then why did you ask am I a poet?"

"That's what people call you," sez she.

Well here's larks gentle travellers of the internet.

We talk for a bit.

"Have you written any poems about the Corona Virus?" quoth she.

"No," I tell her.

"Why not?"

"Different poets are inspired by different things. The Corona Virus doesn't really do it for me."

"Oh."

Then she says: "I'm going home to watch Joe Biden's inauguration. Isn't it great?"

The noble Heelers groans like a Heffalump in pain.

The woman looks at me keenly.

"Do you not think it's great?" she asks suspiciously.

"Oh it's marvellous," I reply. "Let's kill all the unborn children we can get our hands on. Then let's collapse immigration law and label Donald Trump supporters racist. What can possibly go wrong!"

The woman suddenly remembers an urgent appointment and after a hasty adieu hurries away through the mist.

Inspiration dawns.

I feel a new poem coming on.

I muse aloud thusly:

"Shall I compare thee to a Corona Virus?

Thou art indeed more temperate.

Oh Corona Virus.

Fair Corona Virus.

At least you're not Miley Cyrus."

I think this poem has promise.

Just gotta find some way to bring Joe Biden into it.

Driving home from the lake, I am hailed by a gentleman on the outskirts of Kilcullen.

He is waving frantically.

I pull over and wind down the window.

It is Padre Baines.

"Here's the hundred I owe you for our bet on the American election," he says breathlessly proffering a wodge of cash through the window.

I accept it gratefully.

Even in the midst of the apocalypse I am not in the business of refusing wodges of cash from anyone who wants to give em to me. (Cf: Gift horses and ill winds that blow nobody any good.)