1

For the structured life — by school and work
Or family obligation — passing time
Is not a pressing issue, nor for those
Devoted to a conjured holy cause.

A life alone my satisfy both saints
And sinners, even those especial blokes
Who frequent country pubs to sit alone
And watch the scene with an infrequent groan.

And then of course the nature lovers led
By Wordsworth wish for nothing better than
A solitary walk across the hills
Of England bare of its satanic mills.

Unsought solitude implies a man
Or Woman all alone by choice or chance,
The former's rare, the latter's often fought
Against as when one breaks the married dance.

A variant of problematic solitude
Is with us now. For we must live confined
Like soldiers to their barracks and all life
Is fixed, while streets are sometimes given to strife.

Nature no longer nourishes. The air
Itself contaminates, as scientists strive
To immunise us from the raging scourge,
Leaving us nothing much to sing beyond a dirge.

2

Meanwhile, what looms each day is what I thought
About before I got side-tracked by solitude:
How to pass the time without a norm
To guide and help us keep a goodly attitude.

In those first days still hoping for an early end
We phoned or zoomed our friends and learned
Of good folks gardening or doing chores.
All over now, not even socks to mend.

For me, I seek to keep my mind alive,
By reading, first my birthday presents, next
Those unread books upon our shelves,
And books in French, though here I hardly thrive.

All the above I think is laudable,
So too perhaps is my poetic dabbling
And keeping up with current news, though Netflix
Is more dubious. What's the point of all this babbling?

Mere procrastination, delaying a confession
Of a struggle with my obsession
    Of playing online solitaire

A waste of time, which replicates the plight
Of Shakespeare's doomed king.