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He poured the coffee
Into the cup
He put the milk
Into the cup of coffee
He put the sugar
Into the coffee with milk
With a small spoon
He churned
He drank the coffee
And he put down the cup
Without any word to me
He emptied the coffee with milk
And he put down the cup
Without any word to me
He lighted
One cigarette
He made circles
With the smoke
He shook off the ash
Into the ashtray
Without any word to me
Without any look at me
He got up
He put on
A hat on his head
He put on
A raincoat
Because it was raining
And he left
Into the rain
Without any word to me
Without any look at me
And I buried
My face in my hands
And I cried
She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog.
 Nov 2012 Keith J Collard
JL
I have not thought in so long
That spiders are walking on me

In a whisper
Or in a scream
Do not wake me
From the dream
I'm in

The bus is leaving
The clouds are breaking up

Sunlight collects beneath
The old armchair
Dust on my skin
I sit as a statue
My ribs are iron
My eyes cast down
In sorrow or shame

The clock strikes
and a crack appears

Vines grow through
The window and they
Spread silently along the floorboards
Each leaf reflecting in the golden sunlight
Until
Around my ankles they tighten
and around the old chair legs

Out of my mouth they grow
Out of my throat and out of my eyes
That are cast down in sorrow or shame
An old man in a lodge within a park;
  The chamber walls depicted all around
  With portraitures of huntsman, hawk, and hound,
  And the hurt deer. He listeneth to the lark,
Whose song comes with the sunshine through the dark
  Of painted glass in leaden lattice bound;
  He listeneth and he laugheth at the sound,
  Then writeth in a book like any clerk.
He is the poet of the dawn, who wrote
  The Canterbury Tales, and his old age
  Made beautiful with song; and as I read
I hear the crowing ****, I hear the note
  Of lark and linnet, and from every page
  Rise odors of ploughed field or flowery mead.
The dragonfly
can't quite land
    on that blade of grass.
The pine tree of Shiogoshi
Trickles all night long
Shiny drops of moonlight.
All armies are the same
Publicity is fame
Artillery makes the same old noise
Valor is an attribute of boys
Old soldiers all have tired eyes
All soldiers hear the same old lies
Dead bodies always have drawn flies
 Nov 2012 Keith J Collard
Tom Orr
Hello.

                 Hello.

Lillies please,
just a handful,
keep the change.

He asked if they were for a loved one

No sir, for Benny, sir. He questioned the King.

With that I turned and left.
As I broke into the outside air,
my eyes turned to the sky.

It was no use holding back the tears.

He slept beneath the tree as his friends and family congregated

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die - and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.
Eulogy taken from a quotation by Albert Camus
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