GOING ROUND THE SUN AGAIN

Going round the sun sixty eight times

Takes some doing

Even if you are merely a passenger.

The first time round was really a blur

No sense at all that we were

Doing almost seventy thousand miles an hour.

Mother said I screeched most of the way

And that the snow piled high

For months every day.

Even the tenth spin;

I don’t recall a lot of that

Except that it was the year mother got fat

For a while, anyway

And then she was thin again.

The years stretched to decades

Still round and round we went

Sometimes I travelled in the company of steel bars

And sometimes I journeyed with the stars.

And there were times when writers came to say

Becket, Behan, Millar, Hemingway

Of course the children came too.

But for many years I have tripped with you.

My father got to number sixty nine;

I wonder how many rounds will be mine?

 

 taken from my poetry collection ’67 PLUS’

available @  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Tom-OBrien/e/B0034OIGOQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1388083522&sr=1-2-ent