CALLING TIME
First, try the wry smile over the rictus of despair.
And then hope for a heartbeat steady as a pocket-watch
against the busted ratchet spinning free.
Then run your eye along the familiar horizon: so many trees
in full leaf, binding the hills, holding up the sky. And reflect:
Here’s where I’m at again inside another cockeyed morning,
under another sun, the same as its siblings, before and to come,
watching those clouds, each one so true to itself until it isn’t.
Step back, step forward, step away. Everything’s a beginning.
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About Dick Jones
I'm a post-retirement Drama teacher, currently working part-time. I have a grown-up son and daughter, three grandchildren and three young children from my second marriage. I write - principally poetry but prose too, both fitfully published. My poetry collection Ancient Lights is published by Phoenicia Publishing (www.phoeniciapublishing.com) and my translation of Blaise Cendrars' 'Trans-Siberian Prosody and Little Jeanne from France' (illustrated by my friend, the artist, writer and long-time blogger Natalie d'Arbeloff) is published by Old Stile Press (www.oldstilepress.com).
I play bass guitar & bouzouki in the song-based acoustic/electric trio Moorby Jones, playing entirely original material.
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I have a dormant blog with posts going back to 2004 at Dick Jones' Patteran Pages - http://patteran.typepad.com - and I'm a radio ham. My callsign is G0EUV
sisyphus 
Dick, that’s wonderful. So good to hear your own poetic voice again. How are you??
Hi Natalie. Thank you. A toe back in the water. Email on way.
I read this when you posted it but thought I’d sit on it for a day or two before commenting. Maybe I’ve simply been away from your poetry for too long but to my mind this is one of the best you’ve written and I wouldn’t change a word. I especially love “another cockeyed morning” which adds a shot of humour that gives the narrator depth. And maybe it’s me, I don’t know, but there’s a Beckettian flavour here—I’m especially reminded of the opening line to ‘Murphy’.
Many thanks, Jim, a very gratifying reaction from a respected source. I’ve been away from my poetry for too long so an assessment of form being maintained is welcome! And to nominate Beckett as a touchstone is a compliment indeed.