Sky high

The east wind cold but the March day dry
and insistent light being dragged away,
I straggled home from allotment hours
and saw an event I'd not seen before.

There was something happening in the sky:
not the mass of a murmuration
but a cruciform swarm, black against blue,
a hundred at least or even two.

Black crosses swooping, spiralling, looping,
gliding and sliding, diving, stooping,
the dark cloud drifting away then back
as the birds intermingled a whirling pack.

Then I noticed that some were leaving,
heading off in different directions,
sometimes a threesome but mainly a pair
heading home to goodness knows where.

How strange, I thought, what's going on
as the avian couples drifted away.
And then it struck me after a pause -
of course, speed dating for jackdaws.

At the exit

Jammed in the crush at the disco exit

and pressed against a pert young lady

whose cleavage I'd admired all evening,

I whispered to her how nice her breasts were.

She gave no acknowledgement or reaction

but her friend beside her got very upset -

"How dare you talk about my friend's breasts !

You should be ashamed of yourself, you arsehole !"

"It was meant as a compliment, nothing more.

Just like you've got very nice legs."

"Oh." She huffed and looked away.

The logjam shifted and we squeezed outside

like coloured toothpaste from the tube.

I watched them walk ahead of me

then went my usual own way home.

I hadn't noticed her legs before.

They weren't anything special.

So often the means is more important than the end. Trying to achieve something absorbs our energy and fills our time no matter how trivial the aim. In fact, most ambitions prove trivial in the end, our achievements rejected or excelled by our successors. He's a lucky man who dies knowing his contribution will last. But we need to fill our lives with something and doing the best we can at anything is means and end enough for happiness.

26p

I wrote a travelogue, studded with poems,
infatuation, sense of duty, jokes.
Then spent the next decade revising it
just like them London literary blokes.
At last I was ready to publish but
was the world ready to receive my gem ?
To my astonishment Kindle took it
swear words and all, root and stem.
So I waited in hope for it to flower
and eventually got my due come-uppance.
The payment advice arrived by e-mail -
in old money roughly five and tuppence.

She doesn't drive and so I fetch her

from her house that's miles away

in my car to suit her pleasure

and see the latest film or play.

But I drive home in desperation

since she doesn't let me stay

and think between our assignations

how does she get around ok.

I wonder if some other boyfriend

takes her in a posher car

and after some too boozy evening

somehow makes her go too far.

It makes me feel some sort of  'gopher'

and doesn't do much for my pride.

Although I'm certainly the chauffeur,

who's taking who for a ride?

A lengthy drive, two garages,

a cavernous hallway, grand reception,

spacious dining room and kitchen,

five bedrooms (one en suite) -

appropriate for a self-made man.

And yet the name of this splendid palace?

Welcome to ' Cosy  Cottage '

Both laugh at nothing : children at play
and old folk feeling life leak away.