Watching Is Better Than Doing
A Geezer’s Notebook, By Jim Foster
You might be surprised to learn I am not a Winter Olympic kind of athlete. I know I look like someone who just stepped off the podium at St. Moritz after winning the Giant Salmon (or whatever they call the ski race with all the sticks on it) and I have that wind-blown look of a man who just made a perfect landing at the bottom of a Zhangjiakou ski jump, alas I am not. In fact I look more like a man who just climbed out of bed after a horrendous nightmare, which I just did as a matter of fact.
I am more of an indoor athlete, well I’m not even that really; I’m closer to a couch potato and a lazy one at that and so I sit and poet all day long. Hence:
The Song of the Great Indoors
(With apologies to Wilson MacDonald. Come to think of it, Wilson passed on to his reward many years ago and could probably care less)
Chicken, am I when the first snow falls
Chicken, am I till the ice departs
The fare for which my spirit calls
Is a single malt and a mincemeat tart
A nice warm blanket will be my cloak
And the flipping wind is a nasty joke
I’m high on booze and ready to go
But not outside in the ice and snow,
I’ll ride this chair with a dauntless dare
That only a cowardly wimp can know.
The bravest ski has a cautious heart
And moves like a tortoise at the start
But when it tastes the tang of the air
Don’t ask me I won’t be there
The day is gloomy, the curtains half-drawn
And the light is stunted as at the dawn
I look up the hill as he waves adieu
I stare right back for a moment or two
The slim wood quickens. The air takes fire
Holy Moses he’s hit a wire
Swifter and swifter down he shoots
His hat’s caught fire, he’s lost his boots
The lean cold birches as he goes by
Are like blurred etchings against the sky.
Down he streaks like a fallen star
Haley’s comet or a flaming car
A bat from hell he drops like a rock
I hope there’s a steel cup in his jock
Swifter and swifter goes his flight
He went by me at the speed of light
“Help!” he screams as he whistles by
I’d like to help but I’d switched to rye
My feet are numb. My head is number
I’d call for aid but I forgot the number
Was it 9-1-1 or somewhere near?
It’s either help or dial-a beer
Too late now, he’s miles away
The only thing to do is pray
And hope they find him in the spring
He’s no good now without his thing
He left it hanging on that wire
The one that set his hair on fire
I know his wife and she’ll be pissed
His girlfriend too, yes he’ll be missed
Because the jerk was on the slopes
Skiing down with other dopes
He should be lying home in bed
Instead where is he, likely dead.
And so my friends when winter’s blowing
Not to a hill will I be going
The only ice is in my glass
The only wind comes out my bottom
(I couldn’t think of anything that rhymes with ‘glass’)
Norse, am I? Oh no not me.
Unless the temp is ninety-three
And Sven and I are on a beach
With a cold one in our reach
Give me summer all year long
The toasty indoors is my song
I’m in once winter’s wind starts blowing
As for skiing, I ain’t going.
I’m tired even thinking about it. I think I will lie down for a while.
