Linked arms, looking into the future,
my three daughters, in jim-jams,
bought from Sunday markets,
off the Thame Road, near Oxford,
their beautiful young faces
pictures of a world
imbued with all the scattered sadnesses of time,
or so rhymes this over-flowing mind of mine.

Looking, seeing,
you three, as you never can be again,
with all the holy blemishes of youth
leaves me here bereft,
floundering between  sky and sea,
stuck on the saddest shore of wave and tide:
salty, with the ever-present tang of regret.