Is it possible to write a poem on anything?
One day I closed my eyes, and challenged myself to write a poem on the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes again. Since I was sitting at my desk at the time, the thing I saw was a cellotape dispenser.

The Cellotape Dispenser

 

Clung to its roll cellotape hides, clever,

Clearly eluding the keenest nail and eyes

That search its circumference for ever

Tensely hunting the slightest nick to prise.

Like cellotape we hide the tortured end

Of life’s crude tears and long twisting stresses

And when we are called upon again some part to mend

Our strengths tangle into weaknesses.

But the dispenser, a friend of measure,

Will keep an outstretched hand so clear and free.

The cutter zips. The bond grows with pressure

And clearly through it all we learn to see

How with simple help at various lengths

From weaknesses can come our greatest strengths.

 

Stuart Larner

first broadcast on:

17/06/1995

The Northern Line

Huddersfield FM Community Radio   first published in: 15/11/1995 Huddersfield Examiner Huddersfield Newspapers Ltd