Crowds clustered at the embarkation point,

eager now to find their cabins for the trip.

Some few I recognised, having seen them here

over the last few days. Others, unknown to me,

arrived in the final hours before departure.

Security was pernickety, as you would expect,

fingerprints and retinal scans keeping the queue

to a steady trickle. Only the chosen few permitted

...

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A fleeting thought runs through my head

and is as quickly cast aside

because of something you had said,

that common wisdom then denied.

But then I saw a grain of truth

within those words, despite your youth.

Out of the mouths of babes they say

comes insight born beyond their years;

on such a revelation may

philosophers build new careers,

when concepts long believ...

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The first day of Lent is the day we lament

the Tuesday that’s just gone before,

when we’re all content to bask in the scent

of pancakes that we all adore.

A beautiful taste so that none go to waste,

we fight to be first in the queue

and stand there straight-faced demanding post-haste

that I need the next more than you.

I much prefer sweet but might well overeat

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My memories are fading every day;

I sometimes speculate how long they’ll last.

Will they endure until I’m old and grey,

or dwindle till I just forget the past?

I recollect my youth, or most of it,

and revel in the highs, eschew the lows,

but even now I fear, I must admit,

there are some gaps; you all know how that goes.

I try to fill the holes in, bridge the breac...

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How many times can a man tell a lie

before we lose sight of the truth?

How can we see him and still not deny

he’s simply too long in the tooth?

And how many years must we stand here and cry

because there’s no hope for our youth?

The whole situation’s a mystery to me

it’s all just a mystery to me.

How many people across this fair land

are really so wilfully blin...

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Springy heather spreads across the land

masking the mazy web of sheep tracks,

so we are forced to forge our own tracks,

skirting pockets of scree and peaty patches.

At times we have to go back, seeking patches

of dry, stable footing in order to progress,

inching ever upwards, making slow progress

towards the razorback path joining the twin peaks.

We reach the top,...

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The far horizon swathed in red

has bid the dying sun to bed

as she slips slowly out of sight,

and daylight fades to welcome night.

I see this evening in my head,

the far horizon swathed in red,

where wavelets wash that dark'ning sand

that calls to mind a distant land.

A fleeting thought begins to gleam,

as if in some forgotten dream;

the far horizon swathed ...

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I cannot believe the tenacity

of someone who has this capacity

to push with self-righteous pugnacity

a programme so filled with mendacity.

And if you mistrust his veracity,

or query his claim to sagacity,

he’ll question in turn your audacity,

and say that you lack perspicacity.

He’ll shout you down with his loquacity,

attacking you with such voracity,

and wo...

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It’s a day for the bog, said the farmer,

so we hitched battered trailer to tractor

and assembled the few able bodies.

He drove, of course, with two of us

in the bed of the trailer, and two

perched on a plank between mudguards.

We arrived through layered mist hanging,

waiting for the day’s warmth to melt it away,

and trudged up into the diggings.

A multitud...

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In a chat with my long-time best mate

Who’d a penchant for putting on weight

I confided I felt

That he could be quite svelte

If he ate from a much smaller plate

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Far, far away beneath a southern sky

where unfamiliar stars shimmered on high

and Uluru loomed through the pale moonlight

Anangu tribesmen danced for our delight.

They danced a tale of how they’d live and die

far, far away beneath a southern sky

their history not based on written word

but verbally so everybody heard

a chronicle of sixty thousand years,

survived...

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