Tom's Monday Morning Poetry!

Good morning all,

I enjoy what I do because consecutive days are never the same: every day I meet someone new, and when I interview the person, he or she helps me paint a completely new scene. So, in a sense I could compare every client that I am privileged to represent to a painting. Therefore my filing cabinet is a vault that holds many paintings, every one rich in colour and texture and each one portraying a unique landscape. Some are mere sketches and others are the complete article.

What I do reflects my chief joy in life, which is enjoying a new and unique experience every day. A repetitive experience becomes monotonous, which then becomes mundane.

On Saturday I was blessed with a new experience on the tennis court. I was playing a league match against a man who represents God. Yes. The man is a dominee. This in itself was a new experience: I had never played a competitive match against a dominee before. This raises interesting issues while one is playing: Every line call that a man of God makes should theoretically be honest. So, how do you question a dominee’s line call? How do you swear and blaspheme in front of a dominee when you’ve just wrecked a point? The answer is- easily! The most disconcerting aspect about playing against this dominee (apart from the fact that he systematically thrashed me) was that he identified me as the perfect prospect to involve in his business. No, he did not think that I was perfect material to become a priest. The business that he wanted me to join was Amway!

Every time we changed sides was an opportunity for him to extol the virtues of this, the oldest and probably the most successful of network marketing schemes. He systematically sold the concept to me at every break. I usually try and focus on my strategy on the change of side. I was forced to focus on Amway.

I’ll give him a little credit: after the match the beer was free.

This is in no way an excuse for losing: a thrashing is a thrashing is a thrashing, whichever way you look at it.

All That’s Past

Walter de la Mare

Very old are the woods;
And the buds that break
Out of the brier’s boughs,
When March wind’s wake,
So old with their beauty are-
Oh, no man knows
Through what wild centuries
Roves back the rose.

Very old are the brooks;
And the rills that rise
Where snow sleeps cold beneath
The azure skies
Sing such a history
Of come and gone,
Their every drop is as wise
As Solomon.

Very old are we men;
Our dreams are tales
Told in dim eden
By Eve’s nightingales;
We wake and whisper awhile,
But, the gay gone by,
Silence and sleep like fields
Of amaranth lie.

Tootle pip.
Thomas