I'm always losing things.
I specialize in keys,
but lost my leather gloves,
moaned, groaned, bought a new pair.
Wife says, she'll string them round my neck,
found the others below stairs.

Scarves and handkerchieves,
problematic, stocked up,
can't find them now.
She can't believe it.
Vexed, she says,
'You'll lose your marbles next'.

Many of our dead are paper cuttings,
memories of those surviving or
doing duty by our famous dead.
Guardian obituries
stored in books I've read.

Hughes, Eliot, Larkin, Heaney,
MacNiece and Thomas mourning their last drinks.
Uncomfortable shelfmates all,
eternal quarrels, truth debates.

Eliot polite and debonair,
while Hughes cares no for airs and graces
but puts the ladies through their paces.

Heaney digs his pen through family,
myth and culture's history, mining
human misery and mystery,
then Larkin's calendar of life
confronts our stark reality.

I cannot pass these shelves untouched,
demanding voices drench the air,
nor can I find a useful test
by which I can decide who's best.

When you set out through the forest,
hunting, logging, picking fruit,
ask a wodwo to escort you,
with his hefty club at hand,
dragon slayer on demand.

Pay him for the service rendered.
Gold and silver are not tendered,
share the food that you have found
now dragon's meat is not around.

We trusted him, that voice on the wireless,
cricketer by conviction after all.
There were no other views that could
compete, but now we've grown more
critical or so we claim.

And yet we still have affectations,
our urban myths, two-faced politics.

There's strong pressure to conform with
the latest craze wherever born
We share the Ooh's and Aah's across the world
and must hooray the loudest common cause.

It glows warm on her breast, polished
symbol of her life attachments,
subtly marking loving passion,
needing no flashing sparkling zest.

Once the scent of ancient pine,
gooey, enticing insect trap,
transluscent shroud for their remains,
since washed ashore between those
sheer, crumbling, shortbread cliffs.

Men seek to test their metal,
heading for the sea, exploring
experience's distant depths,
plunder from the sea.

Different dangers from onshore.
Diffferent challenges. Naked
and adaptable, learning
ruthless lessons, chancing the main.

The interrior was dark and dusty,
a second-hand treasury for searchers.
Deeply breathing the particulate air,
I squeezed through to my secret back room.

Care of J.M. Dent and Everyman,
there for sixpence, at pocket money price,
an unexplored world could be had.
Dickens, Dumas and Stevenson.