It might be gout, arthritis,
I’ll take some blood.

What for?

To test for uric acid, diabetes
and other things, he muttered.

I might have asked: Like what?
But with his box of needles out

I worked on breathing calmly,
averting eyes from the likely spot;
although there was no pain.

Even at this age there is something
in my look that makes him tell me
I am brave.

Good boy, or...

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It is not all a dabbling in sap and ooze - 
those green effulgences of spring -
nor sifting through the silver blooms
of winter’s snow and goose:
hot and cold the summer blows
and many a tree, on its day,
may play the burning bush.

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I’m a sick dog
with high bark hot tongue
matted fur not long
leave alone.
Grr grr

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“That fucking Tennyson.”
           I caught myself muttering
as I walked along. “Yes,
that fucking Tennyson,
           he can organise a sunset
and flake gold better than I can:
and Emily Dickinson,
           with her yellow children
           at the bars of a gate
closed by her sodding dominie in grey.
And Yeats!  That fucking Yeats
wags an ageing tongue at creation
and leaves me ...

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I tell you Puss, I tell you
dozing in your mushroom punnet
no booze.  no booze, no fags
is dull, I’m bored and cannot
hack it.  One of these days
we’re going to take a cruise
to somewhere, dull:  alright
but in another hemisphere
and we’ll stay up all night
downing hooch, alarming rats
and kicking back on grass
and cat nip.
Good times.  All ahead full.

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