“Scattered showers”
says the forecast,
but as an old man,
in a dry year,
waiting for rain,
I have little confidence
they will scatter
over me.
When you begin
life your forecast
is for scattered
patches of good
fortune. But you
can no more control
their arrival
and departure
than you can
control Autumn
rain on your farm.
Searching for
your own name
on the internet,
with the help of
Mr Google,
is said to be the
result of vanity,
but more often,
I find, it stems from
masochism.
What a pity
each event in our
life isn’t tagged,
automatically,
with an ID code
so that we could
retrieve it, or not,
easily. Instead
mine seem to be
scattered all over
the floor like the
overflow from a
too small waste bin.
Wise sayings
are mostly so
because they are
said to be wise,
and we are
reluctant to
appear not wise
by disagreeing.
Old postcards
from more than
a century ago
tell the stories
of a happy group
of friends, now all
long dead, their
outings, and plays,
and sport, and loves,
and losses, all gone.
Their innocence
went first though,
this last generation
not to know what
a world war would
bring to their happy lives.
I feel like warning them –
“Hey, watch out, bad
times are coming, and
some of you will die
and others weep,
make the most
of your last sunny days.
But they cannot hear
and their ghosts
are fading like
the ink on the card.
Little
injustices
from childhood,
and big
injustices
from adulthood,
fester in old age
You drift
through time
like floating
on an ocean,
until you wash
up on the shore
while time
drifts on
Google must be
broken up due to its
overwhelming power
says News Corp
in the most ironic
statement of all time.
When the Moon
is in the
Seventh House,
and Jupiter
aligns with Mars,
it’s just another
day in a crowded
Solar System.
I have never
told a sexist
joke, nor
a racist one,
not even
when drunk
late at night
at a party.
