Choice

Inexorable logic on logic
plotting formulae into my spreadsheet
with cause-effect, sine-wave, a particle,
pi - on and on – such an effort

but I’m born of melody, mixed
out of salt into soup, grown of sunlight;
a writhing, a forcing, a molecule
grabbing for first breath at midnight.

According to Ralph Waldo Emerson,
a Daemon stands beside me,
an anchor, idealising destiny

and that is surely how I’ll know
a good friend from a sour one,
the dark side of the moon or balmy sun.

Heating oil for the last supper

Outta oil, our tank ran empty
through the coldest winter in a century;
snow’s about and a shortage of oil,
t’wagons can’t get through at all!

I had to sweet-talk Mr Bigshot,
told ‘im tank were empty, we were out,
and only when he heard my missus hullabaloo
did he say he’d ‘see what he could do’.

Next day, there t’was – a big lorry
and he half-filled our tank, bless his trousers,
though yet there’s no spark, there’s no heat here.

But, when I crack the tightest nut in all of history,
the oil bleeds a tear, has a weep, flames away
and our hands warm together – blessed be.