poet laureate

Poet Laureate

I’m back on a trail I used to walk thirty years ago,
now I use a cane and have no dog to keep me company.
The trail is still used by sheep, droppings on ground and
wool on bushes, and I’m not a pathfinder. So Ann Duffy is
a poet laureate, and she also has a living room full of pillows,
I read; I sent her a poem once, so now I can boast that
I have been rejected by a poet laureate.

Thirty years of refutations, and now I’m as old as
the great, still living Irish poet, I ought to be more
humble and take up golf, tried it once it was so boring
that I undressed, it was a hot day, and I swam in a lake
near hole nine and was banned for life, which was
meaningless since I wasn’t a member, too expensive,
but had climbed over a fence to get in.

A tiny rabbit on the track, it looks confused I pick it
up it is incredible beautiful, can’t take it home though,
put it under a bush and hope it finds its own lair.
I look up to the sky the noon sun is glaring at me
as poetic carrions circle low looking for a chair, in
the academic glade, to sit on. Time for lunch so I leave
this thorny landscape to its own lyrical silence.