Dozing

Before I sleep I review the day

searching for anything I did well

hoping a sense of achievement will quell

the worries and keep depression away.

The new English national anthem

God save Jude Bellingham

so he keeps scoring 'em,

helping us win.

Send him victorious

happy and glorious

long to win games for us -

God save the king.

Cyrus

Cyrus was king of the first Persian empire

and rightly termed 'Great' for extensive conquests.

But also great for conquering vanity ?

No terracotta army for him;

no huge pyramid like a pharaoh;

no ayatollah's flashy mosque

and who knows what the arab Mohammad

would have doe if he'd had the resources.

A simple structure of weathered stone

not grand enough for a tourist attraction

Cyrus' tomb still stands in Iran.

Nobody else got out of the van

but I walked and stood and honoured the man.

Tweets 27

Life ?

I've tried it.

There were some good times

but I don't think I'll bother again.

NO  KINGS

What sort of democracy is it

when the elected 'parliament'

can't restrain the president ? 

If it's not the slugs and snails

then it's little boys with footballs

wreck my plants.

Is being addicted to phones

any worse than being

addicted to television ?

Will I get any poetic inspiration?

Well if I do, all good and well

and if I don't, so what the hell?

ALMOST  UNBELIEVABLE

A young girl walking along the pavement

reading a BOOK.

A QUESTION OF SIZE

I'm always pleased when I get some small matter right;

it helps offset the larger I got wrong.

Novelists write to please their readers;

poets write to please themselves.

GIRL

The face of the moon

causing heat of the sun.

Family life

Boys brawling, sister crawling,

baby bawling, eldest scrawling,

husband trawling, promise galling,

night falling, dreams calling.

TYPICAL

The bird fluttered upwards vertically.

Watching I waited for its singing

but it just flew away. Typically

Shelley got skylark; I got starling.

At the top of the plots

I sat here at sunset a week ago and bemoaned all vanishing Nature.

In past years I had watched bats hunting along the allotments hedgerow

but last week there was nothing flying except a partying blackbird.

Today I enjoyed the glowing sunset, silken sky and a single cloud

and as the land darkened, the sky above the streamside trees exploded

to a distant forest fire enfringing the whole width of the horizon.

The lonely cloud evaporated and Venus edged slowly eastwards

narrowly missing a collision with a plane from the nearby airport.

Then suddenly a twist and a turn in the air above my head !

A bat fluttered by and then another - relief, Nature ascendent.