Cantankerous (Sometimes I think)

03/04/2021 – Poem a Day Compilation



Sometimes I think you’re crotchety

An old man sitting in your chair

Annoyed at the world around you

And taking it out on all of us



Sometimes I think you’re just stubborn

Set in your ways since forever

Unable to change how you live or love

And unwilling to make any compromise



Sometimes I think you’re bloody-minded

Deliberately setting yourself at odds

With the rest of the family

Who only want you to be happy



Sometimes I think you’re ill-natured

From a life too hard to comprehend

And I wouldn’t surprise me in the least

If it played on your mind all too often



Sometimes I think you’re being testy

And it takes little to set you off

Your temper quick to irritate

And you’re becoming increasingly impatient



Sometimes I think you’re simply cranky

Grumbling about all of life’s woes

How nothing ever seems to be easy

And life is one struggle after another



Sometimes I think you’re grumpy

And grouchy and gruff and aggrieved

The whole world seems to be against you

Even if that’s in your own mind



Sometimes I think that you’re crabby

A surly curl to your top lip

Snapping and overly combative

Over even the most minor of things



Sometimes I think you’re temperamental

Prone to bouts of unreasonableness

With your quarrelsome nature overriding

All the good that hides deep inside



Sometimes I think you’re petulant

Like a child who can’t get their way

Arrogantly insisting everyone fall in line

Like a boorish sergeant-major



Sometimes I think you’re obnoxious

Acting out in spite against all who care

Making for many a prickly encounter

When it could have been so very different



Sometimes I think you’re cantankerous

But I know that’s not all that you are

And I must summon all my strength

To make it out from the cloud around you

Two People

31/01/2021 – Poem a Day Compilation



I saw two people dancing

Upon a wooden bridge

As in love today

As the day they met



No music played

But they kept in time

And danced a joyful waltz

To the sound of water running



Again, I saw them dancing

Upon the wooden bridge

Smiling and laughing

Like giddy teenagers do



But these were no teenagers

Their spritely years long gone

And though they looked their age

Their hearts beat like they were young



Every week I would see them,

They love so simple and pure

And it would remind me

Of all that was good in the world



Then one rainy afternoon

I saw him dancing on his own

Still in perfect time

And still with so much love



My heart broke as I watched

For a man I didn’t know

And never had I so wanted

To be able to extend my hand



Not to offer a handshake

Or to pull him in for a warm embrace

But to join him in his lover’s waltz

If only for one day

Growing Older

29/04/2020 - Iso Well-Being Compilation



George Burns once said that

You can’t help getting older,

But you don’t have to get old,

And I think that may be the philosophy

By which I have been living my life,

Except that I’ve always framed it

As the difference between getting old

And growing up.



I’ve never felt the need to grow up,

To let go of the childishness

Of play and wonder and creativity.

And speaking to my mother,

She often says to me that

She’s never felt like a proper grown up,

And I wonder if any of us really do

Or if it’s just a delusion we perpetuate.



We worry about the ravages of age,

The frailty and the infirmity of the body

And the degradation of the mind,

And if we would want to live that way,

With a mind trapped in a broken body

Or a willing body but a mind erased;

Could we not have a finite existence
And know our end date in advance?