MY SOMEWHAT LITERARY Keswick-residing parents aren’t exactly ebullient in their praise for the Lakeland Poets.
Having just joined their ranks (the Lakeland Poets, not people who think they’re a bit crap) with my surprisingly powerful insightful short piece “I Pondered Bony As A Cow”, I was curious to find out why.
And I kind of did, but to be honest, the story didn’t enchant me much. Just a bunch of guys (William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge & Robert Southey mainly) enjoying the influence of nature and the meditative state it induces.
This moved them to produce simple lines (bordering on simplistically twee, some may say) nevertheless overflowing with charming images and gentle reflections on waterfalls and lakes and daffodils and clouds and the like.
All whilst battling with their inner demons on what proper poetry is and isn’t, that sort of thing. And discovering whether the dastardly opium-based Kendal Black Drop (in Coleridge’s case) was able to erase creeping physical and psychic fin de siècle malaise.
It makes you wonder what kind of peace life in the Lakes actually brought these fellows. Well, whatever rattles your prose, I suppose.
Nevertheless, I proudly present to you my first stab at a Lakeland Poem for these soon-to-be-legendary Lakeland Chronicles.
Any resemblance in my words to another worthy Lake Poet’s work is entirely coincidental, I assure you (give or take the odd wandering cloud, and a good dose of Kendal Mint Cake to keep the blood sugar levels soaring)…
I Pondered Bony As A Cow (Without Frills)
I pondered bony as a cow 
That farts and poops o’er our fair fields;
How much methane is floating now
Thanks to their well-impressive yields? 
Destroying the ozone layer with ease,
The flies are flirting with the fleas. 
by Sab Will, age 57
P.S. Out of interest, here is the first of four verses of a little-known ‘poem’ by Wordsworth commonly known as Daffodils. He managed to drag his thing out over 24 lines. Really? Was that necessary? Conciseness is next to Godliness, that’s what I say. I mean, just look at my piece above…
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Happy wandering!
The Laggard of Lakeland 
(Lakeland Chronicles No.15)
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Wainwright Log: 2 of 214 Fells Felled / 0 Books Bashed / Visit Log
