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.