Comments on: Diagnostic

By: MB

MB — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 01:52:30 +0000

That’s the way it works sometimes! Good luck. I have confidence you’ll find the solution.

By: Dave

Dave — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 00:21:12 +0000

mb – Yeah, I thought of that. I was reluctant to say too much there and lose the narrative tension, but you’re right, if I can find something brief enough…

Thanks for the additional feedback. This is one of those ones that will need a rest for a while. I’ll come back to it in a few months and the solution may appear obvious.

By: mb

mb — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 17:18:39 +0000

Dave, this is a challenge, isn’t it. I wonder about adding something very small and simple to the third stanza (rather than your elaboration in the final stanza) â€” either to the first sentence, or between first and second sentences â€” something that would attribute the clear view to the deer activity (“eaten clear” pops into my mind, but you’ll know what’s right.). Just a thought.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:07:06 +0000

Man with Tick on Dick
Thanks for the belly-laugh!

I suppose one could make a case for the fact that parasites keep us humble, remind us of our place in the ecosystem. If only they did!

Folks, the edit to the last stanza is an attempt to make things a little clearer, in response to MB’s comments. Still a bit too didactic for my tastes, but I’ll keep pondering it. Trying of course to avoid jargon on the one hand and sententiousness on the other: “too little resilience in the system” vs. “the deer have eaten the future.”

By: Lucy

Lucy — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 06:02:54 +0000

Shit, this is making me itch!
One holiday in the lower reaches of the Auvergne was ruined by ticks, loads of deer and a long-haired dog. Another time my brother got one on a predictable part of his anatomy – apparently this used to be a common problem in the days when courting couples took to the woods for privacy. He was affectionately known as Man with Tick on Dick for a while afterwards.
I loved the forst part of the post, enjoyed the walk, till the tick came along, but ML’s right, impressive you could write a poem about it.

By: MB

MB — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:54:19 +0000

Yeah, you’d know if it was full. They get really gross, a la Bertie Bott’s Nasty Flavors jelly beans.

By: Dave

Dave — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 02:13:42 +0000

doesn’t an adult tick let go when they get full?
I guess, but this one didn’t look at all bloated.

By: David Harmon

David Harmon — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 00:41:37 +0000

if it had bit, it would still be attached.

Umm, doesn’t an adult tick let go when they get full? (That is, to crawl off and lay their eggs…) Best keep an eye out for bull’s-eye rashes (I don’t know how long those take to develop, though.) You should at least phone your local doctor or hospital and ask if there’s a program to subsidize Lyme tests for indigents.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 23:13:56 +0000

I’ve also been in forests where the open room effect was simply the result of shadeâ€¦
Which would in fact be nearly the case with one type of eastern forest, the northern black spruce forest. Here in Pennsylvania, 60-80 years or deer overpopulation in some areas have produced deciduous or mixed deciduous-conifer forests with almost no understory, except for a few species unpapatable to deer. That’s highly unnatural. Now I need to find a concise, poetic way of saying that.

Thanks for the feedback!

By: MB

MB — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 22:52:24 +0000

I do not have a scientist’s knowledge, but perhaps you are correct that I know more than most â€” though the rest of the readers drawn to your blog might not fall into the category of “most” either, I don’t know. I agree, there is challenge to knowing how much background information to provide in a poem.

In this case, it wasn’t clear to me what was causing the lack of understory. I’ve been in woods where it’s obvious from the unnatural shapes of the trees and brush that they’ve been over-browsed. Pruning gone mad, as it were. But I’ve also been in forests where the open room effect was simply the result of shade… a stage in the progression of forest type. But those weren’t eastern forests, with which I’m less familiar.