Confetti


I spot the signs: a few punctured balloons;
soggy confetti squashed in flattened grass.
It must have rained overnight, but the morning sun
beams on a fresh green world, as bold as brass, 
like a smug face in the front row of a farce.

Tomorrow I’ll be elsewhere – no doubt I’ll joke
about being mawkish when I paused today      
imagining their feelings as they woke,
half-wanting to be them, as though the play
might this time round end up a different way.

Let’s face it, most of those who’ve somehow stuck
together through bored decades don’t impress:
they bicker endlessly and pass the buck
on which of the two screwed up the kids. Confess:
is that what you’d consider as success

or would you rather, like me, keep your head,
staying true to who you are, even if it means
a single bed and loneliness instead?
And should you merely hanker for your genes
to be there in the planet’s closing scenes

you won’t be around, so really, what’s the point?
That’s surely Lilliputian vanity –
once we’ve gone solo (not as a sparkling joint
endeavour) into darkness, no-one will be
concerned about their final family tree.

At any rate, that’s what I tell myself
though the thought of those two standing at the dawn
of their life together (in sickness and in health . . .)
leaves me confused at how, inside, I’m torn –
wanting to mock them with a practised yawn

but wishing I shared the hope time holds in scorn.

Tom Vaughan


If you have any thoughts about this poem,  Tom Vaughan would be pleased to hear them