Behind locked doors the Gamblers dare
to cast our fates without a care.
The white, the black, they pull our strings
and use us as a child’s playthings.

Upon the tables of the gods
with wagers cast at any odds,
they stand us all in serried rows
and knock us down like dominoes

As thunder rolls and blind men feast,
the Red Horse rides out in the east
Who’ll win the game, who’ll take the bet?
The wheel is turning faster yet!

Imprisoned in some nameless jail
and, like ten thousand inmates pale,
I counted time I could not feel,
and stood on head, and then on heel.

So turn and turn again about,
like other tortured souls I shout,
yet am not heard, my temples pound,
beneath life’s torrents am I drowned!

Ignored am I, like one and all,
save for the early morning call
that shakes us from our torpor, aye,
and then we fall like hail from sky.

Inevitably down through time
we are mere specks, as dust and grime,
yet in our falling purge our sin,
our labours end, then re-begin.

For lost are we within this sphere,
for all eternity, I fear!
A universe where all are ******,
within a timer’s grains of sand.

Warm sun gives its blessing
to rolling blue-black cloud-band.
Sudden wind blows coldly
across the greening meadow.
Tall young grass bends helpless
before its unknown master.
White tailed rabbit runs now
for bramble-burrowed refuge.
Knowing magpie chatters
up high within tall oak tree.
Mare and foal seek shelter
beneath the may-thorn hedgerow.
Butterfly flits wildly
towards safe dry-stone walling.
Heavy now the teardrops
of saddened springtime weeping.
Rain pours like a torrent
down ancient foot-worn pathway.

Yet like a swallow flying,
so soon the squall it passes!

Sunlight glints like jewels
on dripping rain-bowed flowers.
Blackbird sings to blackbird
from branches decked with diamonds.
Steam arises gently.
from muddied flanks of cattle.
Furtive feet bestir now
to seek the heat of noontide.

Gorse gleams yellow
in the setting October sun's rays.

A brisk north-easterly
sends grassy ripples offshore
towards the incoming tide.

Down sloping meadows
an unseen bird cheeps,
it’s call swept out across
the wide blue bay.

Weather-beaten, a fence
stands furloughed,
the summer’s sheep and cattle
now called home to safer pastures.

And I stand facing east
reflecting upon the passing year,
and upon an unknown  future.

But of one thing I am certain.
One day my ashes will
join you here for all eternity.

Elizabethan manor house
beneath a bleak October sky;
where black crows call from moss-stained trees
and hapless leaves hang where they died.

No breath, nor breeze, despoils the day
that fades now in its lowered gloom;
beset with clouds, a weakling sun
casts little light into the room.

Through mullion windows’ diamond panes
a manicured garden lays;
in muted fading colours now,
with mem'ries of hot summer days.

Electric candles flicker gold,
from panelled walls gaunt portraits stare;
old Lords and Ladies long since dead,
view everyone without a care.

And as the guide concludes his tour
and visitors head for their bus;
a small child glances back to where
he made an ice-cream-spilling fuss.

In black and satin stands a man,
his doublet slashed with crimson fine;
a drooling wolfhound at his side,
he bows in mockery, divine.

Unnoticed, beside the hedge,
I watched them embrace.

She, body arching, silk snapping,
oblivious in her white-hot passion.
He, all the while,
behaving as if drunk;
snared by her feminine wiles,
paralysed by her clinging grasp,
shocked by her sudden forwardness.

I passed that way again today,
but they were gone, those lovers.

All that marked their passing
was his drained husk,
spinning madly
upon a broken,
abandoned web.

Wheeled around in a pushchair,
an innocent child
stares out at the world
with a sticky-faced smile.
A day at the seaside
with ice-cream to eat;
how it melts in the sunshine
and drips on her seat.
“Oh no, look at Ellie!”
her mother exclaims;
“She needs her mouth wiping,
she’s covered in stains!”
But Ellie just giggles,
her small gooey hands
are now grasping her bib,
she cannot understand
that one day in the future,
a lifetime away,
she’ll be taken again
down along the same way,
for a day at the seaside
with ice-cream to eat;
it will melt in the sun
and drip down on her seat:
And she’ll need her mouth wiping,
again and again,
for she’s on medication
to ward off the pain;
staring out at the world
with a bland vacant smile,
pushed around in a wheelchair,
an innocent child.

She goes to spend a month
(what is time?)
with some forgotten tribe
in the foothills of nowhere;
a slim, blonde ‘celebrity’
playing at being a noble savage
for the sake of hard cash and
some TV channel's ratings.

She arrives to a muted greeting,
small children hiding
behind a mother's ***** skirts..
There will be rain tonight,
even though it is
the season of the rich.

She will sleep on a pallet bed
shared with a 75 year-old woman
(she looks 75 but is only 42,
and has borne seven children,
three of them now dead).
On no! The old woman snores!
And how we laugh at our
western cousin,
cringing at spiders,
flinching at shadows!

Tomorrow she will walk a mile,
to symbolically fetch water
in an old jerry can,
and, hidden en route,
she will allegedly defecate
in the bushes!

See her eat some
vile local delicacy
as the headman's
honoured guest.
She will then be forced,
grinning falsely,
into some tribal dance,
wearing a headscarf and
clapping like a maniac.

And eventually, when they
have enough footage,
the sentence will be over.
"I have learned so much about myself"
she will bleat towards
a smirking, unseen director.

Later, as she climbs into an air-con
four-wheel-drive monster
that will whisk her back to
civilisation, the realisation is
that she never once
asked the tribe
what they thought of her.

Life is a gift.
Gratitude for what remains
is more helpful than resentment
for what’s been lost.

Our days are wicked short
and terribly beautiful.

All we’ve got is this one breath,
And, if we’re lucky,
we get another.