I thought of taking tea

I thought of taking tea

Before remembering

It was not to my taste

The kettle was always boiling in the old place

It was you who liked a cuppa

Rarely out of reach

Sometimes there is a crescendo

In a piece of music

When the wheels seem about

To come off

I fear rolling down a hill

Falling off a precipice

At the end of the street

That was never there

Until the reaper wearing his long black cloak

Wielding a scythe that never did cut grass,

Stole the sun, from out of the sky

Without the promise of its return

The only shaft of light now falls

On a picture stuck to the fridge

I was never a babe magnet

But together we manage

To hang on

Side by side smiling against

A Mediterranean sky

When we thought we could be Dolphins

As if they were better than us

When the truth is more complex

So many species

Enjoy a bloodbath

But never you or me

Old Mrs Tailor in the bungalow

On the corner,

Opposite the fire station

With only one engine

That had seen better days

Sometime before the flood,

Drowned in her tea

She was found face down

In a bone china saucer

Her false teeth had come out

They were still snapping on the floor

Auditioning for the Mousetrap

She liked to let the tea cool

Giving it more surface area

You can drown in half a teaspoon apparently

But would struggle to lie face down

In one

It is a sorry picture

But no worse than old Stan

Who suffocated under

A copy of The Sun

(page three obviously)

Whilst sitting on the loo

We would float upon the ocean

Facedown

Wearing a mask and snorkel

Feeding the fish with breadcrumbs

Not necessarily the right thing to do

But it always seemed very popular

With the fish

It was sublime

Taking tea and eating grilled Sardines

In a cafe in the harbour

Fifteen hundred miles from

Finsbury Park

Invisible

Until we spotted a friend from work

What a small world it can be

Whether you feel in the mood

Or not.

Perhaps I could donate the tea bags

To the AA meeting

In the community centre

Aren’t they all supposed to be

Teetotal

Trying to survive without a rush

In a mad mad world

Caffeine-free should fill that brief.