<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
To Oscar<\/strong><\/p>\n On the river bed of night I awake.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s dinner gong throat dry, nose blocked: When he has had 20 times as long he\u2019ll feel a little ropey too, Surely the lives of the old <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Note: Last lines from Robert Lowell\u2019s Soft Wood<\/em>.<\/p>\n Dominic James<\/strong> lives in the South and has been writing poetry for 4 years.\u00a0 He attends local poetry events and finds: “listening is the hardest thing.” He has been published at home and abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To Oscar On the river bed of night I have laid with a pebble pressed into a middle vertebrae, where spades paddled my ribs, I awake.\u00a0 Last year\u2019s dinner gong reverberates in my ears my nose is red, my hair seems further receded, belly more big throat dry, nose blocked: I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5240"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5242,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5240\/revisions\/5242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI have laid with a pebble
\npressed into a middle vertebrae,
\nwhere spades paddled my ribs,<\/p>\n
\nreverberates in my ears
\nmy nose is red, my hair seems
\nfurther receded, belly more big<\/p>\n
\nI have got a cold
\nfrom the weekend\u2019s snot-nosed kid,
\nOscar, two and a half years old.<\/p>\n
\nhe will find, unless he eschews:
\ncigarettes, red wine, late nights
\nand a drowning idleness<\/p>\n
\nbut then, I suppose, he already does,
\nbut does not complain.\u00a0 Oscar,
\nwhat did I read just yesterday?<\/p>\n
\nare briefer than the young.<\/p>\n