Late August in Sommières

Late August in Sommières,

the air outside like a lazy oven,

and I’m torn between, on the one hand, doing nothing,

and, on the other, doing absolutely sod all.

It’s a real dilemma (isn’t it?)

when you find yourself impossibly torn

between two momentous decisions.

I wonder what the Butterfly of Chaos

would have to say about it all.

‘Well, Ferg, if, on the one hand, you do nothing,

two fires in the Amazonian Rainforest

will rage for slightly less time,

preserving an as yet undiscovered plant

which would otherwise become extinct,

and within which hides the cure for, among other things,

insurance scams, kleptomania, and road rage –

yeah, man, that plant’s a real doozy;

on the other hand, if you do absolutely sod all,’

he continues, ‘GDP in Somalia

is going to grow an extra 0.7 percent in the next quarter.

Of course, you could continue to write this poem,

if you can call it a poem,

but that would totally mess with the street value of cocaine

in North Humberside.’

All of this surprises me; I had assumed that

Butterfly’s arcane knowledge was restricted to

matters meteorological.

‘Life’s full of surprises,’ he says,

as if he had been reading my thoughts.

‘There’s no as if about it,’ says Butterfly.

‘I was totally reading your thoughts.’

And, with a flap of his wings,

he vanishes.

Alone with my thoughts again,

I wonder how the cokeheads of North Humberside
are going to take the news.