Verse 8: Moving out, moving in
Sugar-soaping, mopping, sweeping,
drilling, screwing, bashing nails,
flattening used boxes, heaping
rubbish near the balcony rail,
fix the toilet seat (if able)
buy a longer TV cable,
screw in half a dozen hooks,
unpack and shelve a thousand books
(give some away), fix vacuum cleaner,
phone about the internet,
the Council pickup, don’t forget
the neighbours’ names (Regina, Tina?).
Too much to fit so little time,
too much to squeeze into a rhyme.
-
Join 746 other subscribers.
Recent Comments
Top Posts
- Journal Catch-up 33: Meanjin Winter 2025
- About
- Mother Mary Comes to me, Arundhati Roy and the Book Club
- Mick Herron's Standing by the Wall
- Susan Choi's Flashlight at the Book Club
- Laurie Duggan's Old New and Selected
- Erik Jensen's Prosperity Gospel
- Goodbye Mollie
- The Confessions of Saint Augustine, second report
- Bruce Pascoe's Dark Emu
Currently reading & watching- Heat Series 3 Number 21 (edited Anna Thwaites 2025)
- The Ballad of Wallis Island (James Griffiths 2025)
- Five Days, season 1 (Gwyneth Hughes 2007)
- Belvoir: A Mirror (Sam Holcroft 2023)
- The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy 1997)
- Nuremberg (James Vanderbilt 2025)
- Gone (George Kay 2026)
- Griffin: The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin (Steve J.Spears 1976)
- The Secret Agent (Kleber Mendonça Filho 2025)
- Auē (Becky Manawatu 2019)
Tags
ABC Alison Croggon art Australian Women Writers Challenge children's literature comics David Brooks David Malouf doggerel editing Eileen Chong Evelyn Araluen First Nations history Jeff Sparrow Jennifer Maiden journals Marcel Proust memoir non-fiction Novel NSWPLA Overland phone photo poetry Quarterly Essay science fiction/fantasy Sydney Writers' Festival The School Magazine translation-
Recent Posts
- Journal Catch-up 33: Meanjin Winter 2025
- Jennifer Maiden’s Mandatory Sentence
- The Letters of Seamus Heaney, progress report 2
- Evelyn Araluen’s Rot
- *** New Book: Thank Seven*** and other news
- The Letters of Seamus Heaney, progress report 1
- Mother Mary Comes to me, Arundhati Roy and the Book Group
- Susan Wyndham’s Elizabeth Harrower and the Book Club
- The Book Club at Elizabeth Harrower’s Watch Tower
- Garner, Hooper & Krasnostein on tape
- Bookblog #63: Read-alouds
- Nam Le’s 36 ways of Writing a Vietnamese Poem
- Alison Bechdel’s Spent
- Huang Fan’s Flower Ash
- Summer crime audiobooks
Archives

My wife responded when I read it aloud: “Sounds like my day!” – she smilingly avowed! (Now look what you’ve made me do, JS!)
LikeLike
Hmm – Sorry, Jim. My own partner is amazingly forbearing as she carries most of the intellectual work and the anxiety.
LikeLiked by 1 person