Electronic communication across the airways in one form or another is inundating our lives 24 by 7. How is everyone coping with the onslaught. Here is a poem recently read on ABC Radio in Canberra.
Inundation (Terms & Conditions Apply)
At dawn I woke … well, not by choice, but to my phone’s persistent voice: a buzz, a ping, a cheerful chime informing me it’s “screen-time time.”
“Your steps are slow.” “Your sleep was poor.” (Yes, thank you, I had guessed that score.) “energy low.” “be sure to rest.” my watch tells me I’m not the best.
Three emails marked “just circling back,” two family chats, she’s gone off track the granddaughter won’t take advice accept behaviour, and “be nice.”
An ad appeared (how did it know?) for shoes I searched three weeks ago. Then slippers, shirts and hats instead, my thoughts are sponsored in my head.
“Flash sale ends in minutes, act!” (a most suspicious kind of fact) “Upgrade your life!” “Improve your skin!” I can’t recall what state I’m in.
I fled outside, no battery need just trees and sky and space to breathe … but after a peaceful hour or so … I felt detached from the daily flow.
No buzzing praise, no gentle shove, no algorithmic kind of love; no one to tell me what to buy … or count my steps or optimise.
So here I sit, in quiet doubt, half wanting in, half opting out; for peace is nice … but, truth be told, it doesn’t buzz … or take control.
And so I say, (with a get real grin) accept the world you’re living in!
Footnote I said a hi to AI and asked AI to have a say. In a blink it’s up to you, and what you think!
Richard Scutter Sept 2026
Thank you for including me in your electronic life!
The Prayer of St Aidan of Lindisfarne
Leave me alone with God
as much as may be.
As the tide draws the waters close in
upon the shore,
make me an island, set apart,
alone with You, O God, holy to You.
Then with the turning of the tide,
prepare me to carry Your presence
to the busy world beyond,
the world that rushes in on me,
till the waters come again and fold me
back to You.
Aidan of Lindisfarne
From Wikipedia ...
Aidan of Lindisfarne[a] (Irish: Naomh Aodhán; died 31 August 651) was an Irish monk and missionary credited with converting the Anglo-Saxons to Christianity in Northumbria. He founded a ministry cathedral on the island of Lindisfarne, known as Lindisfarne Priory, served as its first bishop, and travelled ceaselessly throughout the countryside, spreading the gospel to both the Anglo-Saxon nobility and the socially disenfranchised (including children and slaves)
This prayer is all about going out in the world to do good … then coming back home to recover, regenerate, revitalize … enjoying being at home … and all that this entails … then returning into the world to continue in doing good … so in a way this prayer is all about a life journey … with suitable time out.
The journey represented metaphorically by the continual motion of the sea. Although it was written in the spiritual life of Lindisfarne centuries ago it has wider context to the way we live our lives. In a physical sense it is not always possible to connect to the wider world when there is water on the causeway.
There are several different texts on the Internet with slight variations in the wording. And the following is an extension to the prayer above …
You alone I follow, Lord Jesus; You heal my wounds. For what shall separate me from the love of God, which is in You? Shall tribulation, or distress, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? O Lord Jesus Christ, I approach Your banquet table in fear and trembling, for I am a sinner, and dare not rely on my own worth but only on Your goodness. Breathe in me, O Holy Spirit, that my thoughts may all be holy. Act in me, O Holy Spirit, that my work, too, may be holy. Draw my heart, O Holy Spirit, that I may love You and serve You faithfully. Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give Your angels charge over those who sleep. O Lord Jesus, let me know myself and You, and desire nothing save only You. Let me hate myself and love You. Let me do everything for the sake of You. For Your mercy’s sake, O Lord my God, tell me what You are to me. Say to my soul, ‘I am your salvation.’ So speak that I may hear, O Lord; my heart is listening. You are Christ, my Holy Father, my Tender God, my Great King, my Good Shepherd, my Only Master, my Best Helper, my Most Beautiful and my Beloved, my All.”
This is an image from a Stained-Glass window in New York …
Shakespeare’s sonnet 130 is a little different from many more popular sonnets and the summer day comparison –
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;
My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun; Coral is far more red than her lips' red; If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun; If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks; And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go; My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground.
And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare As any she belied with false compare.
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
All aspects of her face are decried in in the first stanza. In the second stanza a case of body odour. And in the third stanza the decry of her voice. And it looks as though she could be flat footed. Not a pretty picture. However, Shakespeare does open with the first line of that stanza saying I love to hear her voice. The rhyming couplet states that despite all the comparisons in the aforementioned stanzas she is incomparable and rare. A unique being that he loves.
Why do we … compare ourselves with others … always look for ways to improve ourselves … are seldom happy with the way we are … always seeking perfection … perhaps subtle where change is gently mentioned … trying to improve relationships … on a reciprocal basis of course!
Well, despite such considerations when we look at those we love and those close to us, we are usually more caring. The great contrast in the rhyming couplet is to give acceptance of traits and shortcomings. In this poem they are highly valued. To the extent of showing incomparable appreciation to one very precious person.
On life and poetry creation … making the most of a situation … surviving the event …
As Well as They Can
As well as it can, the hooked fish while it dies, Gasping for life, threshing in terror and pain, Its torn mouth parched, grit in its delicate eyes, Thinks of its pool again.
As well he can, the poet, blind, betrayed Distracted by the groaning mill, among The jostle of slaves, the clatter, the lash of trade, Taps the pure source of song.
As well I can, my heart in this bleak air, The empty days, the waste rights since you went, Recalls your warmth, your smile, the grace and stir That were its element.
A.D. Hope (1907 - 2000)
There are three separate stanzas dealing with survival in some form in different situations. The first stanza is all about a fish fighting to live. In this situation we, the fisherman or lady, are in control whether the fish lives or dies. If the fish is undersised it should be thrown back. We all desire to live, at least until something might happen and we are in such pain we just want to be released from suffering. The fish is no different.
In the second stanza the poet wants to survive as a poet. The poet is after the pure source of song and is continually detracted by the shortcomings of others and their unfitting behavior in the advance of what he or she wishes to say. Towards the truth or the truth within that the poet wants to reveal. It is difficult when frustrated and not being able to find the appropriate words that reflect the purpose of the poem and how it will be perceived by the reader. And being genuine to our self is not easy. Poets often confront the established view and sometimes suffer for such expression.
In the closing stanza the poet recalls the precious moments with those that are deeply loved. This is dealing with grief, the ongoing struggle to keep going after loss. The heart is in bleak air and the days empty.
In summary the poem is all about doing as well as we can, doing our best as we experience life. And interestingly the fish does the best in the same pursuit with not the same recognition.
A. D. hope an Australian poet who came to Canberra as the first professor of English at Canberra University. He is highly regarded as a poet, more details on Wikipedia – A. D. Hope on Wikipedia
This is a follow up from my previous Post showing the full poem by Robert William Service.
L’Envoi
We talked of yesteryears, of trails and treasure, Of men who played the game and lost or won; Of mad stampedes, of toil beyond all measure, Of camp-fire comfort when the day was done. We talked of sullen nights by moon-dogs haunted, Of bird and beast and tree, of rod and gun; Of boat and tent, of hunting-trip enchanted Beneath the wonder of the midnight sun; Of bloody-footed dogs that gnawed the traces, Of prisoned seas, wind-lashed and winter-locked; The ice-gray dawn was pale upon our faces, Yet still we filled the cup and still we talked.
The city street was dimmed. We saw the glitter Of moon-picked brilliants on the virgin snow, And down the drifted canyon heard the bitter, Relentless slogan of the winds of woe. The city was forgot, and, parka-skirted, We trod that leagueless land that once we knew; We saw stream past, down valleys glacier-girted, The wolf-worn legions of the caribou. We smoked our pipes, o’er scenes of triumph dwelling; Of deeds of daring, dire defeats, we talked; And other tales that lost not in the telling, Ere to our beds uncertainly we walked.
And so, dear friends, in gentler valleys roaming, Perhaps, when on my printed page you look, Your fancies by the firelight may go homing To that lone land that haply you forsook. And if perchance you hear the silence calling, The frozen music of star-yearning heights, Or, dreaming, see the seines of silver trawling Across the sky’s abyss on vasty nights, You may recall that sweep of savage splendor, That land that measures each man at his worth, And feel in memory, half fierce, half tender, The brotherhood of men that know the North.
Robert William Service (1874 - 1958) from Ballads of a Cheechako (Book 4)
Robert Service was a Canadian explorer who went into the Arctic and the Yukon in particular. Hence the need for Mawson to change North into South in the third stanza.
Here are some details from Wikipedia …
Robert William Service was an English-born Canadian poet and writer, often called “The Bard of the Yukon” and “The Canadian Kipling”.[2] Born in Lancashire of Scottish descent, he was a bank clerk by trade, but spent long periods travelling in the west in the United States and Canada, often in poverty. When his bank sent him to the Yukon, he was inspired by tales of the Klondike Gold Rush, and wrote two poems, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee“, which showed remarkable authenticity from an author with no experience of the gold rush or mining, and enjoyed immediate popularity.
Encouraged by this, he quickly wrote more poems on the same theme, which were published as Songs of a Sourdough (re-titled The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses in the U.S.), and achieved a massive sale. When his next collection, Ballads of a Cheechako, proved equally successful, Service could afford to travel widely and live a leisurely life, basing himself in Paris and the French Riviera.
Partly because of their popularity, and the speed with which he wrote them, his works were dismissed as doggerel by the critics, who tended to say the same of Rudyard Kipling, with whom Service was often compared. This did not worry Service, who was happy to classify his work as “verse, not poetry.”
LÉnvoi – the sending forth
Looking at the poem it is all about comradeship after days of coping with the extreme environment of the Yukon. The lines give reference to treasure and the discovery of gold. Survival as a team working in such arduous conditions is portrayed in the lines. And Mawson could readily relate to these lines on his explorations. And the talk around the campfire at the end of the day and how they coped.
This work will aways remain as a fitting memorial to the life of those early explorers who ventured into the frozen extremes of our world.
There is an exhibition on the Antarctica at the Australian National Museum Canberra until 11 October 2026. I took the following image on a comment on Books and magazines made by Douglas Mawson. The Adélie penguin is a common species of penguin.
… and here is the Macquarie Island Romping Song that the explorers used to sing …
Below is a portion of a poem by Robert Service used by Sir Douglas Mawson (1882 – 1958) written in his own hand in a book from the John King Davis Collection at the Australian Antarctic Division library, at the end of the poem he makes an apology to Robert Service – a poet he admired, because he put in his own alteration – he changed the word “North” to “South” – to suit his own Antarctic exploits.
The original Robert Service poem is L’Envoi – published in the volume “Ballads of a Cheechako” in 1907. Mawson had this book, and “Songs of a Sourdough” with him in Antarctica on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, as well as Service’s novel The Trail of 1898. They were often read aloud after dinner in the Huts.
Perhaps when on my printed page you look,
Your fancies by the fireside may go homing
To that lone land where bravely you endured.
And if perchance you hear the silence calling.
The frozen music of star-yearning heights,
Or, dreaming, see the seines of silver trawling
Across the ships abyss on vasty nights,
You may recall that sweep of savage splendor,
That land that measures each man at his worth,
And feel in memory, half fierce, half tender,
The brotherhood of men that know the South.
Apologies to Service—
D.M.
seine = large fishing net
In a few words the above lines define the foreboding environment in the many months he endured such harsh conditions as home in that sweep of savage splendour. And the land that tests each man to the extreme of personal resource, a land exacting emotion both fierce and tender.
And for me Sir Douglas Mawson stands out of all the explorers that ventured into the Antarctica at the start of the last century. He was so lucky to have survived on three separate occasions, his survival story legendary.
He highlights the brotherhood of the small group of men that had that first-hand knowledge of Antarctica and he recalls the companionship essential for survival – never forgotten by him or by those that have only dim understanding when reading the extract.
A. A. Milne is most celebrated for his children’s books inspired by his son, Christopher Robin Milne. The character Christopher Robin and the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh were based on his son and his toys, with the bear inspired by a real bear named Winnipeg at the London.
A simple six stanza poem, each of two rhyming lines based on the passage of time and the innocence of childhood. The poem begins with a child’s recollection of early life from the age of one to that of reaching six. The structure and playful tone capture the childhood mind.
Of course, a six-year-old child is not inclined to reflect back on life. One of that age is only concentrated on moving foreward to the next day. And one certainly not able to produce such humour reflected in the words of the poem. The first five stanzas stress the fact that the child is barely alive. The contrast in the next stanza is so marked. He or she is clever and has discovered cleverness by doing something specific perhaps. But this maybe a little trying for his or her parents. Especially if the child has been terribly annoying like working out how to open a cupboard! Humour comes in the closing stanza with a wish to stay clever for ever and ever.
If we take any journey in life over a short period while learning and being educated, we may reach that clever state too – hopefully not with arrogance but with the happiness that seems to be articulated in the poem. Of course, as we get older, we often reflect back on life. We may still feel regret of something that has happened. It can continue to colour our daily life. The clever thing is to dismiss it from thought and move on.
In some way this poem is a bit like the climbing of a high mountain. On the way reaching a plateau. A place where you want to stop and rest and stay where you are. At the same time being pleased with the initial achievement; with a reluctance to proceed to the next stage of the uphill track. I think we continue to be challenged in one way or another no matter our age. As we ger older perhaps the plateau is a rest in the evening after an exacting day and the need for a good sleep.
A child's foot doesn't know it's a foot yet And it wants to be a butterfly or an apple But then the rocks and pieces of glass, the streets, the stairways and the roads of hard earth keep teaching the foot that it can't fly, that it can't be a round fruit on a branch. Then the child's foot was defeated, it fell in battle, it was a prisoner, condemned to life in a shoe.
Little by little without light it got acquainted with the world in its own way without knowing the other imprisoned foot exploring life like a blind man.
Those smooth toenails of quartz in a bunch, got harder, they changed into an opaque substance, into hard horn and the child's little petals were crushed, lost their balance, took the form of a reptile without eyes, with triangular heads like a worm's. And they had callused over, they were covered with tiny lava fields of death, a hardening unasked for. But this blind thing kept going without surrender, without stopping hour after hour. One foot after another, now as a man, or a woman, above, below, through the fields, the mines, the stores, the government bureaus, backward, outside, inside, forward, this foot worked with its shoes, it hardly had time to be naked in love or in sleep one foot walked, both feet walked until the whole man stopped.
And then it went down into the earth and didn't know anything because there everything was dark, it didn't know it was no longer a foot or if they buried it so it could fly or so it could be an apple.
Pablo Neruda, translated by Jodey Bateman
Looking at the first stanza … this is all about growing up … accepting who we are and not what we would like to be … in life perhaps … and with time we become molded by the constraints of who we are … eventually fitting into life after the repeated exercise of experience … but do we become defeated when we can’t be something different …
Then the sorry tell of a forced existence … a forced way of life being led this way and that way … over the rough ground … and hopefully some smooth ground too … it became hardened nailed to life – if you excuse the pun … it became toughened to life … perhaps that is what happens all the time with the body that suffers the consequences of living … I won’t mention the state of my left knee which is yelling at me at the moment to be something different
In the second stanza there is another side to the situation … a brother if you like who has been through the same restrictive experiential existence … and has had to adapt too … was this brother more accepting … who knows? … but it is always nice having someone close by all the time to keep you in balance … and there is reciprocate behavior …so that in unison ground is covered so to speak … but perhaps the brother foot led the way and forced the child foot into following … partnership can be one sided …
In the end the foot had to come to rest … what was it like at the end of the journey … and what was the end … it was returned to what it might become … a touch of reincarnation … or perhaps an unknown spiritual afterlife … so many people die wishing to be blessed with something better … sadly, in the past Church congregations paid money with that thought in mind … not too mention terrorists who hoped to be rewarded after performing ugly violent acts.
Looking at the structure. This poem is an example of an unusual extended personal personification of how part of a body evolves in a life-time … it is up to the reader to extend the thought into how we adapt to experience and how we try to cope if we cannot be what we want to be … how we accept who we are under the circumstances of our existence … and how we work together in unison with the body of life … and whether we are connected to a soul-mate to lead us
Here is another poem that follows on from the last stanza. Albeit a gentle welcoming ending to life. A classic example of extended personification – Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death — He kindly stopped for me —”
In this poem, Death is personified as a polite, gentle gentleman who arrives in a carriage and takes the speaker on a journey. Instead of being something frightening or abstract, Death behaves like a courteous companion. Death “kindly” stops and drives a carriage. It transforms fear of death into something calm and reflective. The entire poem continues this personification metaphor, making it richer and more meaningful.
