It's taken many years for me
to learn to lick my knife
and brave it out in company
despite a frowning wife

not with the aim of being rude
or trying to annoy
or any help in eating food
and certainly no joy

at others' outrage (What a fool !)
but just to give a hand
in doubting ideas learned by rule
that we don't understand.

I don't believe I'd cut my tongue,
not even if I tried,
so why was it my parents clung
to custom as a guide?

When someone told me, young and shy,
you can't wear green with blue,
despite the grass and summer sky
I thought it must be true.

Or rather didn't think at all,
just did what others do
but now I'm older comes the call
to question things  -  and you ?

"Don't look back. Never look back."
The problem being what you lack.
The joy remembering may well cost
more sadness seeing what you've lost.

Which feature of flowers is most attractive?

The size and shape of petals perhaps

but surely most would say the colour.

The vibrant variety of hues and shades

provides us with continual pleasure

so who would want to make them duller?

Is it the human need for novelty

or else the human greed for gain

that tries to use Man's ingenuity

to develop a black tulip?

Space photos

The lunar earthrise
was a revelation
but Voyager's blue dot
beyond imagination.

Not a poem ! But . . .

He found a dead bird in the water butt, presumably one of the young sparrows that had been foraging in the garden. Even as an adult he was upset by the death. Then his daughter came to see what he was doing. She smudged a tear in her eye but wanted to hold the dead rag of feathers.
"I suppose we'd better bury it." he said.
"No, Dad. Birds belong in the air not underground. I don't want to soil these feathers with earth."
"You're right." he said.
Together they perched the featherweight corpse high up in a bush facing the white clouds in the blue sky where it should have been flying.

Too many potholes, too many bikes,
too many signs and traffic lights,
too many cars and too many lorries,
too much pollution without a solution !
Enough of excuses. Too many 'Sorry's.

Too many houses, too many shops,
too many dangerous tower blocks,
too many towns and congested cities,
too many species going extinct.
Not enough guilt and too many 'Pity's.

The Earth is warming we're all aware
though some dispute it because they don't care.
We poison the planet with carbon and plastic
unable to curb our drive to consume
except by means unacceptably drastic.

We all know the problems but who's to blame?
We choose the culprit as if it's a game -
politics, business, who can it be?
Well, it's actually you as well as me -
just too many people !  QED

Special Offer !  Special Offer !
Here is a once in a lifetime chance
to see the world as never before -
the people, animals and plants,
the lakes and mountains, winds that roar
across the oceans and the plains . . .
Hurry ! Quick ! While it remains !

Only for a limited time
more wonders than you could conceive.
See how mankind has conquered Earth
with knowledge that you won't believe.
Be amazed at how, since the birth
of science, the puny human race
has claimed this speck of dust in space.

A bargain that you can't refuse
is what's on offer. You may find
romance and, if you're lucky, love.
Emotions will expand your mind
to dream of sacred heavens above.
This experience you must not scorn !
And how to book it ? Just be born.