About shovels

Last night, at our weekly post-church gathering at the pub--sometimes I wonder if we don't go to church just in order to find out if everyone is going to the pub after--and our services start at six-forty-five and end about eight-thirty at night, in case you're thinking we're a bunch of Sunday-afternoon lushes which, quite frankly, I can't claim we aren't--my friend Darren, the prophet recently flown in from England to smack us around (bless his cotton socks) was telling us about his morning's visit to his old, messed-up church (come on, you all know the type.) Apparently they do have some clue, because someone there spoke up before the congregation, saying there was a mocking spirit there that day--yep, that would've been Darren. And there were plenty more mocking spirits at the pub, when Darren shared with us the call to worship he'd heard that morning. "Let's take up our shovels of worship, so we can dig our wells to Jesus," which presumably trailed off into something about streams of living water, though I personally wonder if the shovels wouldn't be more useful to dig themselves out of all that bullshit. Anyhow--we had a good laugh, I thought I'd share.

And here is an excerpt of a poem by Roo Borson, probably my favorite Canadian poet (she'd have to slug it out for the definitive title with Don McKay, but they're good friends and I expect they won't want to go there), which illustrates the proper way to use shovels in poetic imagery.


The heart is a shovel leaning against a house somewhere
among the other forgotten tools.
The heart, it's always wanting to dig up old ground,
always wanting to give things a proper burial.


Well, it's two o'clock and I'm still in pyjamas. Time to go out and walk/run on the paths, the woods' path, the fields' path.