11 - Anvils

#NaPoWriMo Day 11 and tonight I’ve been writing a haibun inspired by a very real story that happened a few hours ago…

Remember that, if you’re a subscriber to my Patreon, you can hear a recording of this piece (and the ten preceding it) there. The link to the relevant post is here: https://www.patreon.com/posts/anvils-155399668

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I am searching for the perfect metaphor, all unknowing, a way to say: this is the situation, pay attention, I’m not joking, it’s serious business, not something to downplay, get ever-so-British about, not a sideways shuffle into clout, this thing I’m on about. I have been skirting closer to the truth while people nod, knowledgeable, exchange sympathies, euphemisms dripping with sincerity and wildly off the mark, while I slump, succumb, let them off the leash to bark up the wrong tree, watch them run, blissfully oblivious. Why spoil their fun? But now you’re here – caught in the dipped beams as my friend encourages us to creep from the car and crouch, coo cozening comments. You’re having none of it – big bright bastards battering you with blather, bugger off! So you scuttle into last summer’s dried grass at the foot of habitat whose name you carry, barrier to chatterers, and hide enough of your head to no longer see us, torso tense in prickly denial. And, while my friend’s snapping pictures, I’m thinking: That’s familiar. That’s a Mood. That’s… a simile so spot-on the gods, no longer dropping hints, have got it literally spotlit…

In hiding from debt,

I spy an apt analogue:

Hedgehog in headlights

Depiction of the evening’s discovery made imperfectly by me (Krita & Huion)