Hedge fund

My job is to watch shadows

to count bees and study rabbits.

For this I am paid very well.

It is right that it should be so.

For who else knows their habits

or what to pick from the hedgerows?

I would not change any of it

for all of your financial stealth

or the indifference that you bestow

daily upon this suffering world.

For there is nothing in the wealth

of all of your counterfeit gold.

A map of loneliness

I am occupying an empty square.

I am living where no-one goes
willingly in the game of Monopoly.
My soul is in the Old Kent Road.

Anxious dreams normally wake me
when you are taking the children to school.
Solitaire is the game for me:
I can't play tennis – or pool.

There is no-one to counter or to check
my scores on the Scrabble board.
No-one to make a meal for
or to challenge my double word.

On the Essex coast, later this year
walking along the cockle shelf
I will harvest some memories
but I will keep them to myself.

I could go on my own to see a film
I might know what happens next.
But, the thing is, who would I tell?
I have no-one to Skype – or text.

No cards are ever hung up.
There are no contacts in my phone.
Easter and, especially, Christmas
go unnoticed. I spend them alone.