A round; two kilo
metal disc for throwing in
track and field - discus
Then - Now - What
'Then' is what made me.
The family I was born to.
All the things I did in my early life,
all the things early life did to me,
shaping the person your eyes see now.
Read my words,
hear my voice,
my early life shaped them.
The good and the bad,
the joy and the pain,
I must have those memories!.
My days of childhood are my foundations.
My family,
my friends,
my loves and experiences.
My 'now' sits on that past.
My past is my rock from which my 'now' bursts forth with confidence.
The confidence in knowing my place in this world.
Realising just what I have,
and how fortunate I am to have it.
I have known and met my ancestors.
Where I came from fuels the life within me.
'What' is my future.
I must learn not to be a slave to what is yet to happen,
for; although my 'now' can help shape it.
It is not like a road stretching out in front of me,
solid,
tangeable,
mapped out.
Nothing is mapped out
I have yet to discover it,
to form it,
to shape it.
No one's tomorrow is certain.
I must live in my 'now' and learn to enjoy what I have.
I must study all I see.
Look; then look again.
I must feel it,
smell it,
taste the world around me,
the world I have helped to create.
My Anxiety
There's no one thing that sets it off,
well; other than it's usually over nothing important.
It'll be; being 2 minutes over on a parking ticket or,
my mind will have jumped 3 steps ahead and is fretting over the consequences of some terrible act that I'm never going to do,
but I'll start catastrophizing over it anyway,
on something which is never going to happen,
I'm never going to do it -
but so it starts
It's like that little voice in your head,
you know; your conscience,
only with me it's more like one of those sargent-majors,
the ones who shout orders at you,
and end every sentence with "you 'orrible lad you!"
And then my chest starts to tighten,
as if in a vice
a vice which someone is very slowly turning the screw,
slowly,
deliberately,
tighter and tighter.
Then there's the 'washing machine' stomach,
with an imbalanced load of bath towls,
that load that never spins smoothly,
churns with a clunk,
the load that causes your washing machine to walk across the kitchen floor.
Then my heart picks up on all this action and decides to pump more blood round me.
Forget the sound of horses hooves along a beach!
This is that disaster movie,
the one with the captain on the bridge of an ocean going liner,
fighting to keep his ship afloat
yelling down one of those 'speaking tubes',
"more power, more power!"
By this time my breath decides to join the party,
gets heavy and I'm starting to flush.
By now I'll have forgotten what it was that set me off in the first place!
But their it is!
My anxiety.
Not logical,
not a sensible reaction,
but there you have it,
anxiety is not a logical; sensible reaction.
Maybe I Look Tired and Old
Driving along the streets I grew up on,
along streets I used to walk along,
streets I used to play on.
There are middle - aged men and women
shuffling along.
Looking very tired,
looking very old!
Maybe they are.
Maybe these are the people I went to school with,
The people who I played with.
Maybe I look tired and old!
Return to Ventnors' Shore
Ventnor on the Isle of Wight,
once a gem; a shining light.
A fashionable health resort had grown
'round a climate of its own,
'neath it's chalky downland hill,
said could cure many an ill.
The Southern Railway used to run
the 'well to do' for sea and sun,
the trains from Ryde did take them down
to 'Ventnor West' and 'Ventnor Town'.
To fill hotels; fill beaches too,
doing what was 'good for you!'
Taking the air; swim in the sea,
Ventnor was the place to be!
The beach to which Victorians thronged
now time and tide; both have wronged.
It was the 'Londoners' place to be,
they called it "Mayfair by the sea!"
Ventnors' current streets I feel
are looking a little down at heel.
The days of steamers at the pier,
day trippers all; come nowhere near.
But...
If on the Isle; head Ventnors way,
don't listen to what others say!
Stand on the beach; what's that you hear,
is that a steamer sailing near?
Are the stations full of trains?
Are we curing aches and pains?
For when we all can fly no more,
we will return to Ventnors shore!
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