coffee steaming, in ceramic cup.
eyes cast down, toward pine boarded floor.

i breath in and then exhale.
the coffee then passes my lips.

i sigh once and then once more.
stolidly, continue to study the splintered floor.

struggling to surmise.
the reason for the sadness in your eyes.

the problem in a nutshell,being at the age
of just about four.
you have no idea of the score  or even,
how to play...

70 miles an hour and the crash called
Said now is your time and I am the wall
To smash you and trash you, turn you into pulp
And the mini bus driver just thought it a joke

I'd just overtaken that bus full of guys
Now the truck getting nearer, I'm nearly alongside
No warning atall and the minibus was there
Filling my windscreen with a heartrending scare

There never was room for him to get up ahead
I thought this was it, 3 of us will be dead
The two dogs as well there would have met the same fate
I don't know how but I stood on the brake

Into the traffic there on my right
I managed to avoid them kept the barrier in sight
Now the rear of the bus less than a foot from my front
The crash barrier about six inches to my right

I stayed in control but I still don't know how
My wife was in tears mother in law white
I'll never know why we're still alive
Someone or something made sure we survived

I slide the silver painted six shooter
into the holster on my right hand side.
I stand there arm arched, hand ready
to go for the gun. I push my cowboy

hat back away from my cool forehead.
The bad guys are circling me. Today
I’m Wyatt Earp, the day before I was
Bill Hickok, shot in the back while

playing cards with some blonde ******.  
One of the bad guys goes for his gun,
I go for my gun before his is out of
his holster, I’ve got him between the

eyes, then the other before he can say:
What the heck, then the other before
his gun reaches to his eye. I blow along
the barrel as they do in films, put it

back in my holster. My mother irons
clothes in the other room. My sister
plays with dolls, in the long hallway.
None heard the gunshots inside my head;

all bad guys are dead.   I light up a
thin sweet cigarette and light it on an
imaginary match struck on the wall.  
Half hour later I see Ingrid on the

balcony. She talks of going to the
park to go on the swings and slide.
She has her brown hair held in place
with hair clips, mild buckteeth, brown

gravy eyes gaze at me. What you been
doing? she asks. Cleaning up the West.
West what? She says. Wild West, I reply.
She nods, uncertain, uninterested. Shot

three baddies. Bang, bang, bang. I push
back my thumb and point *******.
I am Wyatt Earp today. You were Bill
Hickok yesterday, she says, looking at

my ******* aiming at her narrow chest.
What happened to Hickok? She asks.
He 's dead. Oh, she mouths.  I put my
fingers away in my trouser pocket. Swings?

She says. I guess. So we walk off together
down the stairs, she wearing a red flowery
dress, white ankle socks, black plimsolls.
I look down the stairs well for any bad guys

lurking, gun ready in my trouser pocket,
Bowie knife in the belt around my waist.
She talks of a new skipping rope her mother
has bought her, I see no one lurking, no baddies

waiting with guns out. We walk through the
Square, out in the open, my ******* posed
for action, my Bowie knife ready to throw,
off we walk towards the park we slowly go.

I stand stunned
in awe
as you
sleekly shimmer by
in a fabulous flurry
of lustrous  lapis blue  
and jubilant  jade green
not sure where you are
headed
knowing that
wherever you wind up
glamour glides  
along as a
  constant companion

Seriously I do carve walking sticks
Always an eye for what's growing in a hedgerow
Professionals use fancy ways
Every shaft arrow straight but that's not my way
Nature gives the wood the form
So why abuse it
Shaping and carving wood is a bit like poetry
It can be stilted and formal or it can flow
Like volcanic lava finding its own path down the mountain
Who the **** is stupid enough
To try to write a poem about a walking stick?
Me
Maybe I'm not normal
But
I sell the sticks I carve
And most sticks take me about fourty hours
Start to finish
I sell on average four a week, simple you pay a pound an hour
When you buy one of my sticks
Not a bad return for something from the hedgerows