Rice Planting Song #1

I'm going to try to write a short haiku-like stanza for every day I work from now on. Can't see it lasting more than a week, but hey ho. I don't really like my work. I mean, in many ways it suits me down to the ground, but I do feel very envious of (a) anyone who genuinely enjoys their job, (b) anyone who feels their job serves a genuine social purpose and (c) all these writers (hundreds of them! Thousands!) whose work has a ring of literary authenticity about it, either because they're actually surviving on grants, prize money and publishing fees or because they're teaching other people about literature or writing in some esteemed institution. The first and last time I felt like the world around me was saying, "Be a writer, Jon!" was the first year or so of the creative writing minor at UEA. Before and after, it's just me having ideas above my station.

So in an effort to make work something more than simply a large chunk of my waking life traded in for cash, I'm going to try to find something in it to write about. Every day. Forever. Or maybe for a week, or just today. Um.

Anyway:

Rice Planting Song #1
Anoutzas v Tattlesells 17.06.10

Crow is more lawyer
than most lawyers, his worn gown
skewiff on wire-
hanger-high shoulders, head down.