A Croc in the Field
for Harry Paterson
Today’s operative on the ohrwurm shift
has hacked the WiFi password
in the ear canal and now I’m looping back
endlessly to a misheard lyric:
“you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille,
with four hundred children
and a croc in the field,” and everything
on my to-do list, every book
or magazine or limited event series
on Prime, everything I’ve tried
to hitch the rickety wagon of my attention to
has been denied and defeated
by the image of a homestead straight out
of Norman Rockwell, only swarming
with dungaree’d kids in a grubby multitude
scaling uprights and downpipes
in pursuit of the relative (rafter-strained)
safety of the roof, others chancing
their luck in tree branches or atop a water tower
stencilled with the name of a town
that’s never been known to trouble a map,
while it prowls below, sluggish
until it needs to move: a thousand kilograms
of hungry impatience packed
into 20 feet of gnarled skin, tail decimating
corn like a thresher, razor wire teeth
at the business end; and I can’t help thinking
that in all the scenarios for upping sticks
Lucille picked a pretty smart time to leave.
Neil Fulwood was born in Nottingham, England, where he still lives and works as a bus driver. He has three collections out with Shoestring Press: No Avoiding It, Can’t Take Me Anywhere, Service Cancelled and The Point of the Stick, and a collection of political satires, Mad Parade, with Smokestack Books.