After Not Being Promoted

 And of course

Last night’s disappointment at football

Will take quite a while

To wear off

It’s probably the end

Of that team as we’ve known it

Already I have learnt

They were the second oldest team in the league

There is a sadness

And a dullness

Also an apprehension

Instead of an excitement

This isn’t how the first day

Ought to be

Yet doubts always surface

At the beginning of an adventure

And so the emptiness

The loneliness of leaving you behind

Brings a hollowness

To the car's interior

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Flatland Slopes

I don’t belong here

What with my dodgy hips

And all these sloping pavements

Which also annoy the hell

Out of my nervous thighs

Someone once said

That Lincolnshire was flat

Well not on the wolds it’s not

All over the place there are tricks

To trip up the troubled walker 

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Want. Want. Want.

To rearrange

Or reassemble

Isn’t quite the same

As starting over

You know

When you buy something new

Which in the shop

Appeared to be the very thing

To set you up

Instead

To make do and mend

Even to mend

That which is not yet broken

As a sort of way

Of making the point

That to have something new is your desire

For almost all

But not all

Situations

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The Old Stables

Tidying is begun

Two chairs and a desk

Offered to Freely Given

Two chairs (IKEA)

Brought from the house

To begin a new life

Cobwebs and dust

Removed

From walls and ceilings

Diamonds and Rust

Played

On the iPod stereo

The concrete floor

Once more is visible

As is the easel and stepladder

How difficult change is

Simply to rearrange

Is one heck of a toil

How hard

To wash away those past years

To open afresh for new memories 

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Stuff

There is a good deal

Of tidying to be done

Trouble is

As is often the case

Where to begin

How to make a plan

When no plan

Seems to be forthcoming

Where goes the dynamism

From those previous summers

You know

With exhibitions

Of paintings and sculptures

Using driftwood

For decoration

So much since has entered

Which now must be

Put out to pasture

Or taken to refuse

One wonders

How do they do this

In New York apartments

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