She walked the world with a clipboard in her hand,
collating and confusing information and statistics.
How many? Who did what and why? She baked pie
charts and constructed three-dimensional graphs,
made spreadsheets, drew diagrams of facts
which could never be verified but she swore
were not conjecture. She formalized opinions and hunches,
turned fiction into certainty and invited us to take
her findings at face value. Sometimes you stepped into it,
other times you did not, no-one knew who was to blame
or what to believe. It was idiotic and obscene,
all these stories and poems written without proof.
© Rupert M Loydell
‘…face value…’. I’m watching forests being cut down in Virginia, USA, shipped 3500 miles as biomass pellets to Drax, N. Yorkshire, then burnt to supply the energy, thus web access to acres of documents on my screen, sometimes printed as paper copies to make sense.
Comment by Christopher on 24 September, 2021 at 5:17 pmThat is, as a trustee of a care charity, making sure all our policies & procedures follow the rules, and staff obeying every injunction.
In the end, a friend, a warm hand, a smile, ‘I’ll look after you’, will work so well, without the acres of protective guidance dogging all our relationships, including social care.
‘…what to believe,…stories and poems written without proof’. So well said.
Thanks, Rupert.