When I am not busy, I think of you,
sitting on a table, across a room,
unsmiling round the camp in brown or blue,
then suddenly the sunshine breaking through.

When I am not busy, I think of you,
longing to see you, hoping you will come
at reg or break or dinner or after school,
any time at all - but you never do.

I catch my breath on entering a room
or round a corner case you should be there,
making my days so long I long for sleep
to free myself from all this aching gloom.

I have been here before but long ago
with other women not as young as you.
Then I had less than they to lose,but still
the strain of longing aches as ever so.

I could have come and taken you away,
careless of consequence, a week ago
but then the shock of seeing you in that
so long expected, unexpected way

as you should be with someone of your age,
unworried by my ageing, ageless cares,
able to explore life by yourself,
unsullied by the trivia of this page !

How could you fit the clothes I foist upon you,
attired in my wearying waking dreams?
Perhaps you are sensible enough to stay away
until this mangy quarantine is through.

Knowing that this will pass as such a thing should,
I hope I have not caused you any harm
and in this passion for your precious youth
you will in later time find something good.

Some sail the ocean, voyaging wide,
daring danger with youthful pride,
run with the wind or drift with the tide:
adventure is the fuel.

Some plunge the ocean, diving deep,
beyond safe light where creatures creep
unknown to men who aim to keep
discovery as their rule.

Some travel wide and deep as well,
heroes indeed as legends tell,
who enter heaven via hell,
their fame bright as a jewel.

Others are timid and stay at home
content to foster instead of roam,
preferring shallows to ocean foam -
Who's for a dip in the pool ?

In our civilised society
most sane people would agree
the need to help and even protect
those least able to fend for themselves.

By and large we'd also agree
on who we think are vulnerable -
those ill, disabled physically,
as well as challenged mentally.

But we still allow the constant abuse
of those without too much of a stash
to be exploited by the use
of lotteries promising easy cash.

While we start to reign in gambling,
we haven't yet begun to enable
other restrictions in remembering
the gullible too are vulnerable.

And do you think you'll ever come to bed with me -
this year, next year, sometime indefinitely ?
What would you say if I should ask you that ?
Pass some remark about the weather or the cat,
busy yourself with something on the stove,
anything except face up to love.
Or should I call it lust, reading your thought,
wrinkling your nose at some disease I've caught
that can be cured only in your bed
between your legs not raging in my head.
True love is knowledge in the whole soul's sense
and to this knowledge no impediments
remain except our bodies' separateness
which lust will overcome and thus be blessed.

I've always known but never quite believed
that I would die and so I've never grieved
an umimaginably distant end
but now I'm old and know my time is short
it seems a most illuminating thought.

The prospect of annihilation tends
to dim the rosy lighting memory lends
to efforts and achievements highlighted
by wishful thinking - what was life about
and what remains when all the lights go out ?

So much that bulked important at the time
in retrospect seems farce or pantomime
with stereotypic characters and plot
stuttering to an undramatic close
of anti-climax wrapped in tragic pose.

Religion claims to offer a way through
the darkness ( though these days the Christian queue
upon the path is not as long as some)
but flickering candle shadows still create
caverns where superstitions lie in wait;

and answers given by theology
confuse with abstract terminology,
raising new questions to explain the old;
then unconvincing theories only leave
faith as the trumping ace tucked up the sleeve.

As gamblers sitting round the circled glow
that floods the table we can never know
for sure the bluff from real and make our play,
crossing our fingers and our breasts in hope
that, even if we lose, we still can cope.

What of the explanations science brings
to countless age-old questionings,
demoting commonsense and old wives' tales
in favour of experimental ways
and data in the glare of public gaze?

Now evolution, atoms, gravity
concede to scientific method, we
can train the scientific searchlight on
the gloom and mystery of human death
and try to make some sense of shibboleth.

With all the power science can provide
it surely must be able to decide
whether eternal life is fantasy
and so religious fraud or whether Man
evolved a Soul somewhere in Nature's plan.

With or without a soul it's my belief
that time in general is not a thief -
it makes its bargain with us through our genes
since births contract repayment at our ends
of all the atoms nature only lends.

And when the sun expands in years to come
and swallows up the planets one by one,
the Earth itself cannot avoid its fate:
all life will perish - animals, plants, men -
one last illumination ! And what then ?

The terracotta warriors

Jigsawed together, re-arranged in rows,
millenia faded military pose,
unblinking stares ignore the tourist gaze
and stony faces censure foreign ways

Famous from photos and the strange idea
of burying soldiers in a grave
as bodyguards against some royal fear
that ghostly subjects might not quite behave,

these charioteers and archers, cavalry
with horses, officers and infantry
were made to boost the ego of one man
regardless of the cost of his vain plan.

Presumably he thought himself too rich
and powerful by far to actually die.
Could someone so important not just switch
his empire to that afterlife on high ?

Just like the pharaohs in another land
with pyramid squat toads upon the sand,
because he can't imagine being dead,
he thinks he must be somewhere else instead.

But thieves who later broke into the vault
to steal real weapons from toy soldiers' hands
despised his guardians that never fought
and smashed his dolls ! In the museum stands

a likeness of that ancient emperor.
I didn't want to see his face or name
as worth no more than any warrior
accorded anonymity not fame.

It's unjust peasants endure poverty
to further monumental vanity;
unfortunate as well that art should need
patronage from colossal greed.

At your mum's

It's a long walk from the station
knowing you won't be there;
the empty streets echo my thoughts -
tonight you will not soothe my care.

Who would have thought that loner me,
who prided living to himself,
would find in you such love and help
that you became, as if by stealth,

a cloud enveloping then absorbed
from time and sympathy shared alike,
changing the outlines of my life -
new land reclaimed by a dyke.

Most of the time we live too close
and, out of focus, cannot see
the lineaments of love that touch
unfolds unknowingly.

We need to part for time to think
and feel the emptiness surround,
to know we both are growing ever
closer together in love's ground.