I choose the cover art ...

I choose the cover art for my next chapbook,

‘Letters to a Dead Man’ – the image faint,

shadowy, suggesting evanescence. Ah, but 

are not all our lives evanescent really? 

We never once ...

We never once kissed on the lips, I remember.

I mentally shrug, thinking it matters little now.

It was forty-odd years ago, I’m eighty-three.

‘That no longer hurts,’ I assure myself, ‘not when

I weigh it against all the lasting things we did achieve’ —

then suddenly I’m engulfed in anguished sobs.

All those things ...

all those things

we were never free to do –

longing

Yesterday I missed writing ...

Yesterday I missed writing 

my daily small poem. I was

busy all day trying to create

the best words to complete 

a tale I’ve been telling

of darkness and light,

old pain, old love. Then

I was exhausted. Prose

is such bloody hard work! 

I must finally ...

I must finally let you go, I decide. 

You turn up in my dream

as if in response, and we dance:

waltzing together and smiling,

endlessly. Oh! 

                       You cannot lose 

what really belongs to you,

even if you throw it away.

Note: The quotation is from the I Ching.

Strange, how ...

Strange, how my own writings

take me back into the feelings 

I felt when I wrote – that inspired

what I wrote. Do I still love you

every bit as much? Oh, it feels 

as strong, as intense, as deep!

I look at the photo ...

I look at the photo

of my long-ago love.

‘Of course I’ll love you 

forever, you stupid man,’

I say good-humouredly

to his dear dead profile —

or to his ghost, who 

surely no longer doubts.

An extra one for February, in case anyone is reading this one-a-day in a leap year. (Otherwise, you get to read two in one day.)