INVESTMENT

INVESTMENT
(poem for Gary Stevenson)

I smile at you Gary
from the bottom of my pram

though I’m
not sure you would
bet on me
find me
a good investment

I think you
smile back
(though what do I know
about trust
and the people and
the world
out there that
awaits me)

you seem
a good soul, generous
smart, a good enough human
as humans would
appear
to go, not yet
done a risk analysis, calculated
the percentages

my future out there
moving past, looking in

pram, ship of state, all
the same to me now, feel
the germ
of an Odysseus (what
seas
to navigate?)

are you Achilles, Charybdis,
one of the Sirens,

figure of myth, truth and
shadow Homer of my future, just

stopping by for a
quick, blind, taste
of the future,
sublimely

quiet peep in.