The Attic

For the Friday 5 this week Michelle has given us: doctor, roll of film, stairwell, telephone, secret.

First they tried to doctor

the evidence. Then

they hid the roll of film

with her jewellery in

the carved wooden box

she brought back from the Balkans,

placed it amongst sawdust inside

the old tea chest

they tried to doctor

after it smashed as

she fell. The mystery of

the body in the stairwell

– too late to telephone for a doctor –

stayed a secret till today.

Rumour – 3WW #92

This week Bone has given us rumour, shake and spontaneous.

‘You must be the change you wish to see in the world.’    (Mahatma Ghandi)

Rumour has it he was in Sichuan when the earthquake started to shake the buildings. There was no email to his aid workers, always first on the scene at a disaster – natural or man-made. They watched on TV: saw schools collapse like houses of cards; orphans and bereaved parents, stunned into blank disbelief. He would have known what to say and what to leave unsaid, the right questions to ask and whether a children was old enough to face mortality. He worked instinctively and his love for his fellow humans was spontaneous, not something he put on like shaving cream.

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Double Life for Friday Five at Poefusion

Today’s words are: dog trainer, bills, beach, pie and whistle.

She leads a double life
– by day a dancing teacher
– by night a dog trainer.
She exchanges the tussle
of little girls without talent in tutus
for snarling dogs
needing discipline.
She’s good at both.
My dog remains unruly
because I do not go.

She took up Disco and aerobics
in the Eighties, to lose
the weight gained from
eating apple pie and cream.
She has no qualifications but
no one ever asks. The money
helps to pay the bills.
Now she teaches Pilates too.
When I realised it was her,
all though I’d paid,
I did not go.

Today,
I caught sight of her
walking along the beach
at low tide. I watched her
put her fingers to her mouth,
whistle her dogs to heel.
I was close enough
for her to see me
but I did not acknowledge her.

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Masquerade

striped impostor
quick claws grasp
unsuspecting prey

This week’s prompt is ‘Pets’.

Above is my lovely moggy who periodically transforms himself into ‘Jack the killer cat’.