Prickly things - hard to handle until you know how

As we have been trimming a lot of tricky, spiky things lately – yuccas, giant agaves, pigmy date palms (they have spines on their leaves that go like daggers to your heart) – I considered the problem of handling prickly things. And I hit on a pretty basic insight: Once you know how, it’s easy to handle.

Getting your gloves on and pointing all the spiky bits in the same direction (away from yourself), goes a long way toward making it a painless experience. I was going to carry the analogy over to writing – dealing with difficult dialogue or twisty plots, killing your darlings and resurrecting ideas. I was going to comment on life in general. I was going to hold forth on the debilitating existence of prickly people, but the words and the sounds just ran away with me. So here is a pretty little poem about prickly things.

The world is full of prickly things –
prickly pears, porcupines, people,
pissed-off cats and pineapples.
Handling them can be pretty painful.
Until you know how.

Prickly pears are prickly and painful
and loath to give up their juicy goo,
but there are ways to peel a prickly pear,
pain- and prickle-free.
Porcupines have bigger prickles
but porcu-pricks can be prevented too.

To handle a cat you might need a permit,
a diploma in preventing disaster
and a personal protection device,
but even a cat can be controlled –
they’re hard to handle
until you know how.

Experience is a pair of gloves
that fits over your tender fingers
and stretches even to your heart,
for prickly people prickle deeply.
It’s all hard to handle when you start.

Until you know how.