The new year diet is begun
Music, art, literature
And a little less food
Yes down to sixteen hundred
Calories a day
For the next three months
Mind you, the walking
Hasn’t taken off
Like it should have
It’s just not in me
Not in this dull cold weather
Where I prefer to play
With inkblots
And spots of memories
From the near and distant past
When I encouraged
The Rorschach test
I do intend to begin the new year
With a more inward looking journey
Which is what I am trying to realise
That is, this is what I hope to find
I am not alone in having lost a lover
Of that I am 100% certain
I am though entirely alone in dealing with it
In the way which I try to deal with it
I know that it goes dark outside
Also that that happens earlier
In winter rather than in summer
I know too that loss goes darker
If all that I am is all that I am
Then what am I to worry about
But if I also try to include you
Does that not create a new story
Once upon a time, long ago
I did include you
Indeed thoughts of you preceded all
I was going to have just one more
But then, out of the Celebrations
Bumper Christmas re-seal packet
My hand emerged with a Twix
And a Mars bar, honestly
I had no choice did I
I hate the Twix first
But then, I thought of Fee Griffin’s poetry
Another Christmas gift
But from a more familiar source
Who also gave me
The Hero With A Thousand Faces
Only two of which I will use
To tell you that today is Sunday
And the sun shines brightly
To ward off storm Bella
Who is the real reason why
I did not go to the Mountain
To see the Four Colours of Rock
Neither did I walk around
The Basket Dew Pond
I did not enter the Guardian Shelter
Of woven hazel plastered with mud
Neither did I traverse by the Cuckoo Dome
Which interleaves the inside with the outside
The Shelter for Dreaming though lives on in me
I borrowed it’s name for a poetry collection
It almost became that basket
Which lies between this death and that life
The Tumulus on the Downs
Came before I walked there
Similarly the Air-Vessel Canoe
A few lines
Before meditation
Before bathing
It is Christmas Day
Chocolate wrappers
Point to last night’s indulgence
That Raymond Hurley
Plays on the stereo
Says something also
Not that peace and goodwill
Are ever frowned upon
But today, well…
For some it is a trip to the beach
Even a dip in the sea
But for me it is the pen, the paper