Illustrated Canadian Forestry Magazine, December, iqpo 593 



An Ode to a Telegraph Pole 



Slushly is the highway between the unspeakable hedges; 



I pause 



Irresokite under a telegraph pole. 



The fourteenth telegraph pole on the way, 



From Shere to Havering, 



The twenty-first from Havering to Shere. 



Crimson is the western sky; upright it stands. 



The solitary pole. 



Sombre and terrible, 



Splitting the dying sun 



Into two semi-circular halves. 



I do not think I have seen, not even in \"orticist pictures, 



Anything so solitary, 



So absolutely nude ; 



Yet this was an item once in the uninteresting forest. 



With branches sticking out of it, and crude green leaves, 



And resinous sap. 



And underneath it pine spindles 



And ants; 



Birds fretted in the boughs and bees were busy in it. 



Squirrels ran noisly up it; 



Now it is naked and dead. 



Delightfully naked. 



And beautifully dead. 



Delightfully and beautifully, for across ii melodiously. 



Stirred by the evening wind, 



The wires where electric messages ate continually being despatched 



Between various post offices, 



Messages of business and messages of love. 



Rates of advertisements and all the winners 



Are vibrating and thrumming like a thousand lutes. 



Is the old gray heart of the telegraph pole stir"ed by these messages? 



I fancy not. 



Yet it all seems very strange, 



An<l even stranger still, now that I I'Oticc it. 



Is the fact that the thing is after all not absolutcl\ nake<I. 

 Tor a short way up, half-obliterated v.ith age. 



Discolored and torn. 



Fastened on by tin tacks, 



There is a paper affiche 



Relating to swine fever. 



The sun sinks lower and I pass on. 



On to the fifteenth pole I'roiu Shrrt to llaverini^. 



And the twentieth 



From Havering to Shere: 



It is even more naked and desolate »h;in tiie last. 

 I pause (as before ). 



(Author: We can start all over again now it' yon like.) 



(Editor: I don't like.) —Front Punch. 



