Mind reading

I was in a gathering of people in a building where a guest poet of no mean reputation was presenting one of her poems, shown large on a screen for all to see (the poem, that is to say).

The poet wandered round, reading with hand-held microphone, her voice adding meaning not discernible in the words on the screen. Her reading ended, we were invited to respond, some did, and then she came over to me.

I told her my mind had been side-tracked at approximately line eight …

‘Would you mind reading it now, aloud, and then perhaps you could explain what side-tracked you?’ she asked me. So, I did and at the end, I explained that I had recalled an event when I was about 17, and carried along with my remembrances, her poem slipped from my mind … and I apologised again for my lack of concentration.

I’d been reminded of a girl I knew back then and wondered why she’d put on such false airs. Why couldn’t she just be herself? Was she afraid of letting those around know what her real self was like? I said it made me angry when she spoke in her small, pretended shy and self-effacing kind of way … as if her listeners would be shocked, offended if she was to talk naturally, be straightforward in what she had to say. I thought, perhaps she was inhibited by the body language and social standing of those around her, though I wasn’t sure what that meant … I was confused, I said, and then fell silent … but the poet urged me to continue …

‘I saw that girl again tonight,’ I said, ‘clear and unconfused now in my mind; what I’d said of her was just not true, the problem was with me, not her… At 17 I was still immature, inhibited, afraid, held back by what others might think of me … and had been until I accepted the ethic of my own true self.’

She smiled, and just before moving on, one point of her poem was made as she asked quietly:

'I hope you didn’t mind reading …?'

Dennis Crompton © 1997
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)