The GP's Waiting Room

The dirty, spiralled carpet floor
Wears thin in arcs across the door,
And every entrance crops it close
A mote, or less, or more.

A toothstain toybox grins in twine
At childhoods older far than mine,
And lurid loot leans over lids,
Leers through its broken spine.

A crippled doll with empty eyes
Whose sockets suck in moths and flies;
A faded jigsaw's broken life
Grows sad, and old, and dies.

The ancient abacus that lays
With barely beads to count the days,
Or tell the types that stopped and stayed
And went uncertain ways.

And so we write, and so we fear;
The bottom of our page grows near
On women's mags of yesteryear.

We may as well stop here.

Thomas Clark