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Wednesday 27 January 2010

A sorbet for you

Bit of a manic week has somewhat slowed down my progress. Fortunately a nice long train ride down to should give me a chance to properly get into Waiting for Columbus. As a substitute for any real review I thought I’d share a little more of Monsieur Trofimuk’s rather lovely words with you.

On his website the, rather ambiguously, titled The Sorbets caught my eye, so I had a little look. In the words of their author Sorbet are, “ Raw, unfinished snapshot poems, or short prose pieces” designed to provide a moment of light relief to his subscribers. Or as he puts it, far more eloquently,

“They are intended as a breath of metaphor, a small poetic break, in between the work-week, and the weekend.”

How nice is that? Well I suppose that is dependant on whether you find raw prose relaxing. Here’s an example on his website from 2007.

BLACK, FLIRTING DOTS

this morning I stopped

looked up into the elms –

looked for the black, flirting dots of birds

sparrows, chickadees, maybe a pine siskin or three –

the tough-it-out through winter birds

who, this morning, had the audacity to sing

while my mind was on a thousand other things

like money and daughters and wives and work and writing,

and I really wanted to get back inside the warm car –

to get out of minus C plus a wind-chill

But I stopped this morning and looked up –

breathed bird sound deep into my gut – eyes closed,

I felt something akin to bliss, and inside my exhalation

a smile appeared – a simple, joyous smile, just because.

I felt profoundly happy to be above ground,

shivering on the sidewalk mid-winter with bird song

quivering delightful in my mouth.


If you’re feeling suitably zen-like you might want to subscribe to Trofimuk’s weekly Sorbet dispatch. Follow the instructions here. www.thomastrofimuk.com/sorbets/

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