A Redneck At Heart (Revised) Poem by Margaret Alice Second

Channel-hopping to chase interesting things, found
Season Ten of So You Think You Can Dance, then
The Dragons Den and an episode of America’s Got
Talent - thunder rolling softly outside sounding like
lions satisfied and lightning wounding down

Idly wasting time as dishes wait in the kitchen, the
thunder is rolling again, those lions are not sleeping
as yet; a stuntman on TV, precocious kids dancing
and singing, a former soldier hiccupping as song
shows that rednecks really have more fun

Than the rest of us, his girlfriend wearing a pink cow-
girl hat, a group of rednecks on Nat GeoWild drinking
beer while sailing on rafts to catch jumping fish in nets
just loosely held and putting up banners to gaily inform
the world ‘Here Be Rednecks At Play’

I’m a redneck at heart, create my own fun by singing
and talking loudly - but never in the open-plan office
where I do research in a depressed trance of quiet
resignation suppressing feeling and imagination…

13 November 2013