After a long time away
And with ink on my fingers
After refilling the pen
I feel a need to consent
To complete this book
Before I set out on my travels
Such that I might
Take the third book with me
Second is an odd place
Not a cherished space
In any of the sports
Which I practiced
And so with this book
Neither one thing
Nor the other
Just more scratching
On the recycled paper
As one listens
To the angelic chorus
Nowhere is where I need to be
To find the nothingness
Which faces the life inside of me
Nothing sets me free
Such as the emptiness
Of simply being able to see
To see that peaceful calm
Which exists, as if by the trees
Out in the meadows
Or playing in the stream
Where light-hearted
Tenderness sets the scene
Finding memories, once seen
Never to be forgotten
What can it mean
This nothingness, filled
With the emptiness to be
I am that other person
Writing a biography
Of the life which I lived
If you wish to call that
An autobiography
Then that’s fine by me
But don’t go on about it
Because there isn’t time
Not even for those of you
Who were inkwell monitors
Or those of you who remembered
Using inkwells, to make
Blotting paper bombs
For shooting across the classroom
On to the teacher’s blackboard
Whilst the teacher’s face
Was focussed on the chalk spot
A wasp hovers by the pond
A pigeon pecks the grass
Before stepping out, as pigeons step out
Across a lawn one thousand pigeon-steps wide
Another pigeon, perhaps the mate
Comes in from next doors garden
Then a magpie enters the scene
Black, white and dangerously fluorescent green
That a butterfly, or two
Remind me of a garden pond
Where someone other returned home
Most unexpectedly
I too am here by chance
By a thousand coincidences
If truth be known
Or if truth may be told
Any one of those decisions
Could have begotten
An altogether alternative path
For the first time
In a long time
I hear children
And the sound of birdsong
It isn’t a difficult thing
To dream one’s dreams
Yet always we must be careful
Just what we wish for
Take care as you tread
On the cusp of solitude
And loneliness, for one repairs
While the other edges towards despair
That we don’t always know
Or half-way recognise
One from the other says much
About the frailties of the human psyche
Where, in her words
I discerned the self same doubts
Which, day after day