“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.
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.
I have never
told a sexist
joke, nor
a racist one,
not even
when drunk
late at night
at a party.
Never met a
farmer whose
answer to a problem
didn’t involve
shooting it,
poisoning it,
cutting it down,
or pumping
something dry.
Did the death
of Julius
forever stain the
Ides of March
with evil?
American
Exceptionalism
now consists of
being proud of
having a President
the rest of the world
thinks a buffoon
There is an old
joke, where you ask
some yokel “How do
I get to xxxx?” and
he replies “Well I
wouldn’t start
from here.”
My life feels like
that but in reverse –
how did I get here
from there?
No country can
consider itself
modern if
religion plays a
major part in the lives
of its people.
