Rusty Thoughts

I can’t believe it, I just accidentally ditched my blog post again, before I’d finished creating it! This is getting beyond a joke. I haven’t done today’s poem yet though, but I know the poetry prompt for #poemadayfeb for the 23rd of the month is “Rust”. I am now heading off to a word document, so I can do the rest of this post, including a poem, and won’t lose it again!

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Back again, with my thoughts and poem for this new poetry prompt. Phew!

Rust is there in the lives of us all, to some extent, I’m sure, out in the country though, I’m sure there is more rust. We live on a small rural zoned property, with a fair bit of mostly bare earth, and sometimes find rusted horseshoes, great big ones, far bigger than the ones my horse training dad put on his harness racing horses.

The paddocks around here, of which there are many, would have been ploughed, and sown and reaped, with the services of the trusted Clydesdale horse (or similar heavy horse). Those great big horseshoes would have come from such a horse, as the land our house was built on would have previously been farmland, as is all of the land around our home.

Rust is what happens to metal when it oxidises. So when metal is exposed to moisture and oxygen, it oxidises and degrades (goes rusty), and rusted bits flake off. Or something vaguely like that – I’m neither a clever researcher nor a scientist …

Another fact in my life relating to “rust” is that the horse my father had at one stage in his stables, was a gentle plodder, former harness racing horse, named (I think) Rusty Roads. I think Dad may have saved Rusty, as we called him, from certain death at the knackery, and gave him to us kids to ride. It was fun for a while, but I can’t remember when it was we had him, or when he went, the facts of it have rusted away. So many horses came and went at the stables, as always happens …

Graham and I now have a ‘decoration’ on the front veranda. It is about the size of a dog, and is in fact the shake of a dog, made out of corrugated iron. There is a collar around the neck with the name “Rusty” attached to it. We bought him on a trip to Sydney, because we had a little bit of money to spare and both liked the look of him. Rusty guards our front door, from where he sits, chained loosely to one of the veranda posts.

 

I still don’t have a poem yet though, do I? I’m thinking haiku or something small like that …

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No, I wrote a thoughtful little poem about a terrible thing, and hope others may find it as interesting as reading, as I found writing this. It’s about some things I’ve been thinking about, the possible reasons that men commit suicide, a terrible way to end a life, I feel, awful for anyone to feel so low that death seems a better thing to them.

If the poem to follow sparks problems for you, please call:

Lifeline tel:1-800-273-8255 or seek other help

 

Anyway, here is today’s poem, and I have caught up – back again tomorrow with a new blog post about the new poetry prompt:

 

Rusty Horseshoe

What was the suicide rate

for farmers in the olden days,

I wonder? As high as nowadays?

One horse powered farming

compared to the massive

machines used now –

I’m thinking about

the gentle task of tending

to the gentle giant who’d pull

the plow, & take kids for a ride –

big brown eyes, solid

& dependable, always …