It is arranged. Her father agrees.
I will have her, so young and fresh and soft.
She will do anything I want. Everything.
But she cannot be trusted.
I am old. She will be attracted to younger men.
They must not see her. Or she them.
She must stay at home, indoors.
Or, going out with me, be covered up.
Totally.
My old wife will not be happy but she must accept it.
Anyway she will have a new servant.
Ah, how wonderful it is to be alive.

She offered me only the faintest of dates:
"Be here next week and I'll dance with you."
But that in itself was a bit of a breakthrough
from someone who never took off her coat.
Perhaps she was wary of showing her figure,
afraid perhaps that the boys would snigger
as they lounged at the bar with their mates.

Despite her dull coat though, she'd plenty of fans
because she was blessed with a beautiful face.
She certainly wouldn't have been out of place
as cover girl fronting some posh magazine
with fine balanced features, pure skin, piercing eyes
and a smile that engendered interior sighs.
I tried to resist making plans.

The one time I'd managed a serious chat
she'd seemed to be lacking in family ties -
no mention of mother (a minor surprise),
no father around but a junior sister,
still studying, who she helped out with money
which, on her small salary, wouldn't be funny.
Perhaps I could help her with that !

So during the next week I spent too much time
in trying to clarify feelings about her
and what my intentions really were.
The difference in ages was several decades
so I was too old to have hopes as a lover
but what about being a surrogate father?
A Sugar Daddy slime ?!

I hoped my intentions were not quite that bad
(my real daughter, older, would surely not think so
since all women guard against male libido).
Platonic paternal was struggling with basic
attraction to beauty and though it was natural
I couldn't decide just how much it was sexual.
My aged confusion was sad.

But I turned up next week - and she wasn't there!
OK, so that solves it. And just as well.
And then she walked in and I just couldn't quell
the race in my pulse but the lads in attendance
whisked her off to the bar and she passed and ignored me.
OK, what the hell! She would likely have bored me.
They all went outside and I sulked in my chair.

The evening dragged on with no hint of romance.
I looked for her outside but she wasn't there.
The band played their last song; I made for the door.
Then caught a quick glance of her there in a corner
away in the dark with a girlfriend, talking.
Totally flummoxed I just kept on walking
but once outside knew that I'd missed my chance.
In a bright red dress she was ready to dance.

Last overland trip ?

The semi-circle of camping chairs
focuses on the cooking food
(more tuna and stir-fry cabbages)
but also keeps attention glued
on the group itself and avoids the stares
of the gathering local savages.

Like a circle of covered wagons from
the wild west of the USA,
the defensive wall keeps the enemy out
and allows us not to give away
food we don't want or lose aplomb
if someone challenges with a shout.

Our culture encourages selfishness
and makes us inhospitable.
Perhaps if we faced outwards instead
we'd find the poor more pitiable
and see our spoiled self-indulgence less
important than them being better fed.

The land of lost content

Now near the end of widowed life,
I shall not find again
joy of the kind I owe my wife.
What pain and hope remain ?

Maybe my grandchildren could spare
a little joy to fill
my days and then we all could share
some happy highways still.

Country sport

I  can never make my mind up about rats -
they have such a bad press, there must be something in it
but when I see one playing in the grass
or climbing the brambles to eat the blackberries,
swimming in the stream or wading in the shallows,
they're just part of the miracle of life on Earth
like you and me. Yet, like children born in slums,
they carry the stigma of reputed filth.
But these rats don't live in sewers.
I know where they sleep and breed - in a burrow
under the concrete base of my compost bins.
I suppose I should inform the local council
of their whereabouts but the rodent operative
would only poison them which I consider an ignoble death.
Instead I try to keep their numbers down
by shooting them with an air rifle or, to be more precise,
shooting AT them since I rarely manage to hit one
and even less often actually kill one. Still, I enjoy
the challenge of the sport as one of the shooting set.
Perhaps grouse eventually ?

I don't understand why there's always inflation
making us all seem much richer by far
than our parents' and grandparents' generations.

It's true that our standard of living has risen
due to technology innovations
and all the new gadgets that commerce has given.

So the time is long past when we all used to gasp
with envy at rich list millionaires
since a million pounds is now easy to grasp

when so many people have that in their house.
Now to be rich you need very much more
which businessmen with the appropriate nous

gain from their markets becoming worldwide.
And film stars and pop stars all get much richer
from just the same effort more widely applied.

The new opportunities globalisation
affords means that wealth must be measured in billions
to earn any rich list approbation.

But now there are so many billionaires
what's the next step in this vanity game?
Who will gain fame as the first trillionaire?

Young women are so beautiful
they're wasted on young men
who can't appreciate in full
the wonder of the miracle
of slender bodies, tender skin.

Or that's the age old fantasy
dreamed up by older men
who feel they're losing energy
and know the sad reality
of paunchy bodies, sagging skin.

If nature's scheme of things still held,
the drive of younger men,
whose strength and vigour's always excelled
their elders' waning lust, would meld
virility with love within

harmonious marriages to make
the raising of new children
more important than some aged rake's
insemination bolstering fake
machismo. Though, still, women

can't resist the tempt of wealth
with fame not even when
they risk their future children's health
conceived by mutant sperm in stealth
caressing withered, wrinkled skin.

And what's the psychological stress
on any child who time and again
must realise that their dad is less
a father when the other kids guess
he's the grand-dad? Bear it and grin?