I love my little garden, even though it takes me hours
to mow the lawn and prune the trees and **** around the flowers.
I love the bees and butterflies, and I wouldn't mind the snails
if they'd leave my runner beans alone and not go off the rails.

I like to watch the badgers as they amble 'cross the lawn
very early in the morning, in the hour before the dawn,
and if Mister Fox comes passing through, it's really quite exciting
- though I find the smell he leaves behind is somewhat less inviting.

I like the worms - they're useful and they don't do any harm,
but the badgers think my garden's their own private worm farm.
So I rather like the idea of a wild-life community,
Except the badgers messing up the lawn with such impunity.

Yes, I like to keep my garden like a small nature reserve,
but creatures sometimes do things that I really don't deserve,
like badgers digging worms up!  Though I really wouldn't mind it
if they'd just re-fill the holes, and leave my garden as they find it!

I am not familiar with your toothbrush,
not acquainted with it,
have no experience of it,
am unaware even of its colour.

I know that a toothbrush is an inanimate object.
It cannot feel,
cannot enjoy the closeness,
as it massages every surface of your teeth,
sliding in and out between your lips,
caressing your tongue, moving across
the inside of your cheeks.
It takes no pride
in performing its morning duty for you,
no pleasure in your gratitude
for the freshness it gives you.

It would be ridiculous,
surely,
to be envious of that lifeless,
insensate,
ultimately disposable
thing.
And yet ….

…. and yet I cannot totally eliminate
the feeling
as I imagine your toothbrush
in its daily moment
of intimacy
with you.

If you read somebody’s poem and it makes you want to say,
“I think this piece is wonderful; it really made my day, ”
just go ahead and say it. Feedback like this is good,
but saying why will please them so much better - or it should.

But if you think it’s terrible, be careful how you speak.
Some people write as therapy; their life may be quite bleak.
Don’t be too harshly critical and leave them feeling worse,
but simply go to look elsewhere, and just ignore their verse.

Some poems, though, may leave you with a puzzle or a question,
or even make you want to give some tentative suggestion.
There’s nothing wrong with doing this – just get it off your chest,
but don’t think your ideas are necessarily the best.

With writers, though, who think they are God’s gift to Poesy,
if there’s nothing to commend them as far as you can see,
you can state your own opinion – of course you have the right –
but don’t forget the golden rule: be HONEST but POLITE.

I

Once you were within my reach.
Suddenly
you became a
g l i t
         t e r
               i n g
damselfly
Just wait, I thought,
I can change too.
Why did I have to turn into a frog?

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

II

Consider the Paradoxical Frog,
so named because it is several times smaller
than its p h e n o m e n a l l y huge tadpole.
(But then, look at people,
whose achievements often fail to match
the promise they once showed.)

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

III
The Second Law of Thermodynamics

Out of winter, spring,
out of spring, summer,
then autumn, winter,
and out of winter, spring,
always the same.
Out of the bud, growth,
out of the flower, seed,
out of death, life.
Entropy always increases.

If it is considered offensive to make disparaging remarks about those of the feminine gender,
I guess that makes me an offender
when I say I don't understand why, if rabbits are cuddly, and kittens are cute, and furry things in general are considered quite nice,
women feel the obligation to be afraid of mice,
even on a farm,
where they may be a bit of a nuisance, but don't do much what you could really call harm.
Now the farmer's wife of my story was by nature slow to wrath,
but maybe on the day in question she had been disturbed by the telephone ringing while she was enjoying a leisurely bath,
or someone had left a gate open and the hens had got loose,
or perhaps it was just her husband being more than usually obtuse.
Only she was annoyed by three particular mice who were blind
- if that, in these days of political correctness, isn't considered unkind.
Oh, let's just say they couldn't see very well,
but they were quite good at finding their way by smell,
unless they used their whiskers and navigated by feel
as they followed the lady of the house around in the hope of getting a free meal.
However, this time, when she saw the mice in the dairy she broke her golden rule.
She lost her cool.
In fact she threatened to get them with her cleaver,
but either they were deaf as well as blind, or they didn't understand English, or they simply didn't believe her,
and by the time they had turned round and decided to go
it became apparent they were too slow.
Yes, she got all three at once, but I am glad to say
that as she only chopped their tails off, they lived to scamper another day.

The love of a mother for her child
is not the same as the child's love for his mother.
The love of a man for a woman changes
after they are married
from what it was before,
and her love does not correspond in all points with his.
Love between man and woman
is different from the love of boy and girl.

Love can be permanent as the tides, regular, unquestioned,
with no end and no recognisable beginning.
It can come suddenly,
violently,
as a thunderstorm in summer breaks
upon the thirsty earth,
short-lived
except in the memory.

But under any one of these emotions
what is there for us to say?
Only, I love you.

Thoughts can be subdivided, classified, clothed with words.
Words fit feelings only approximately,
and our deepest feelings must often go unclothed.
So when I say I love you
I cannot analyse what I mean.
I only know that I do love you
and hope you understand.