Poem: The Desk

The desk at which you sit for maybe one third of your life

In eight hour increments that

Stacked together

Equal a career and a pension

(Not in France or the Portugese countryside, mind you, not the Algarve, where golf courses and cheap women tend to the needs of English holiday makers)

From which you may derive some measure of satisfaction

Particularly when discounts on the price of lunch and supper are given to you on account of your advancing age and esteemed place in society, or so the joke goes…

This desk gives you comfort.

It is yours.

And when you’ve left for fishing or macrame or whatever it is you will do to occupy your waning years

The desk will remain behind,

Like a faithful hound that peers through the window at its master,

Growing dim in the fading light.