To the good people of Writers Island... please return my cigarette packet!

From Writers' Island this week: this -

and the one word: Clarity



This has the clarity
of poetic
ambiguity,

the clarity
of fitness for a purpose,

the beauty
of an effect
called a venturi.

(An hour glass-shaped constriction
to a flow of gas or liquid in a pipe.)

We see one used
as part of:

an inspirator or inhaler
mixing gas and air;
or
an atomiser spraying hair;
or
a clarinet or a trombone
speeding breath for a better tone;
or
a carburetor sucking fuel;
or
a vacuum cleaner sucking dust;
or
where the jet plane gets its thrust;
or
a scuba diving regulator
controlling the amount of air;

or none of these:
a lakescape: hills and mountains
establishing themselves on land.

Or none of the above,
but cleverly disguised as one of them,
and confounding all those sex police and censors,
an hour glass figure - feminine - reclines
increasing for a while the flow of love
or ecstacy
or both.


It is of course the jet plane's engine. I know this for a fact, because during WWII my father worked at Farnborough with Frank Whittle on its development. Naturally, it was very hush-hush at the time, but he drew the engine for me. And to emphasise it's hush-hushness, he drew it on the inside of a cigarette packet. The packet went missing years ago, b ut somehow it has ended up on Writers' Island!