Success

 There is an undoubted 'feelgood factor' about backing winners on the turf, not that it applied much on Saturday, but it only shows up as raw cash in the end.

Much better, but increasingly rare these days, is the poem one is genuinely happy with. 'Genuinely happy with' means one that turns out better, having done it, than what was offered by the ideas when they first presented themselves. It needs to be 'ideas' and not 'idea' in the first place but one wouldn't start out without the hope that they might produce something more than the constituent parts they are during the making.

With the right things properly in place, it takes no time at all. Yesterday afternoon, it took no more than 45 minutes to allow the 32 eight-syllable lines in 4 eight-line stanzas of ABABCDCD to be written. I put in a few blanks where words were needed to go back to and fill in later, exactly as one leaves crossword clues one can't get straightaway, but did so without too much trouble, seeing what the thesaurus in Word had to offer which isn't usually much because it's AI, not 'creative'.

Success might look as if it owes a debt to Larkin's Posterity but I'd like to think it's a different think entirely. It came together very quickly having had one idea hanging around for a week or two and then something I was reading provided the necessary co-efficient to multiply it by. Yes, there it is. And that is how it works for me. No struggle, no fretting as the late night candle burns down. It doesn't happen very often, it hasn't happened for 14 months, but when it does it is as good a feeling as one can have. I feel much better for a few days but know it's unlikely to happen again for another long time. 

I won't put it here, or not yet. If it still looks any good some time later, you never know, it might find itself in print. The horror of standing up in front of an audience to rip ten minutes  so wantonly from their lives has not yet extended to a reluctance to have such things put on the record in a suitable place. I'm glad to take up such page space if the right place will have me.