It’s what you learnt

It’s what you learnt

During the life you led

Which helped you to move forward

Days, weeks, months and years

Of playing football instead of going to school

Helped you to fall in love with the beautiful game

Damming streams, scrumping bonfire wood

And following the hunt all showed you

That change can be dangerous, and violent

A seven year indentured apprenticeship

In parallel with attendance at technical college

Gave you a trade plus a lifetime of understanding

The Open University with several summer schools

Took you out of the simple country boy

Into a land of intellectuals, also intentioned lovers

Giving up one good life for one other

Led you into a life of struggle and joy

Neither of which have you yet given up on

And so you sit in the beach car park

After a full English breakfast at the golf club

Wondering just what you are going to learn next

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It’s not what you are

It’s not what you are

It’s what you are not

Also that you know

The distance between them

Is vast, immense

Such that to envy

Or to struggle to achieve

Is as powerless or as pointless

As is trying to overcome

The craving for tobacco

It’s what you are

Not what you are not

So forget completely

About talking clearly

In educated English

Instead

Pull together your energies

Push out your clear focus

Into the deeper realities

Of just where you are now

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Was that you

Was that you

Looking out

Over the eighteenth green

On captain’s day

In midsummer

Or did you never share

Such joy or celebration

With your fellow players

Choosing instead

Always to hit the long drive

Is there surprise

In your eyes

That you came here

For breakfast

With strong coffee

The egg

Fried just right

And mushrooms

With the extra portion

Saying something about generosity

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There’s a gap

There’s a gap

Under the door

There’s a point

To its detection

More than a space

For the thrower

Time to anoint

A true reflection

There’s a light

On the hinge

With a reason

For further inspection

More than a beauty

With strength to singe

In this the season

Of faint intention

There’s a shadow

Of window’s lead

There’s a flower

To the true deception

More than a morning

Of bower to tread

There’s the power

Of words with correction

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By the pier

By the pier

But with no real money

So quite unable

To play the slot machines

Much then as it was

As a ten-year old

On Blackpool’s golden mile

Of penny arcades

Which in turn remind me

Of the girl who I asked to wait

at the South Shore pleasure beach

While I went back to Albert Road

Unfortunately the memory

Does not remember why I left

Or what was so god-damned important

That I needed to go and collect it

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