The Chance They Always Lie

     On the left side of the hearth wall –
A tall lamp stands without a shade, and there
Towards the right, pictures of a family gone
Many years ago, faces fresh, smiling, happy.

     The centre-piece of the wall is the
Wood burning stove, not been lit for weeks now,
The ash still there around the feet, the stone
Not polished but, old,

     Old is where I lay now, the
Muscles of my own wall loose and
Dangling to reveal the guts beneath,
     Guts that rumble before the old wiffy
Smells invite the senses run, old too,
The wit that now makes echoes to no
Aboded partner, no afforded room.

     Last week I thought a lost love
Would say hello but,
     The chance they always lie - seeks
Only disappointment and so I wait no more,
But sure, sure the gap between the smiling
Pictures, was not so quite apparent.

     And there again the day after and after that,
The gap between the pictures – bigger and bigger
Till, today the wall is vast and bare and no pictures
 Lost, they are there as the day before and before that too.

     Why is my wife now far from our children,
Why a cosmic magnitude upon the wall and why,
Has the gap between my son and daughter become
As grand as Hockneys works,
     Such space, such space never ventured
And now mourned, the school paintings
Lucky to stretch within sight of each as each day
The gap tumbles into infinite vacuum.

     My thoughts could think, could think I able
To pull self from tattered couch to place the pictures
Closer together just like, how they are within my heart,
But pain refrains the sentimental skill,
     My thoughts are the chance they always lie,
Just like once moons ago I kept going
Yet wanted to fall, but couldn’t die.

     The words here, are perhaps the latest cliché,
A latest trend  but,  this  state  of  being  will  always
Be   a   lie,   for   if   I   could   just   for   one   day,
     Bring     back     those     that     made     the     chance   
       They       always       lie       -       the       fakest
Statement          ever          made,
     We’d be there now, cuddled by the fireside as close together
As can be and then, the warmest of these duelling Suns -
     That spark of love, with glee.

Michael J Waite 1st of April 2020.
I miss my family x