Living With Strangers
She went where she was sent.
Into an old peoples' home,
selling the past.
Moving into the age of time,
leaving a lifetime behind.
She thinks time has made a mistake.
Yet with nowhere else to go
she has lost the key to independence.
She finds letters in the mail
addressed to someone else.
A far-off place is so much nearer now.
The years have shrunk as half forgotten
memories echo through time.
Family outings have been lost to history.
Life has come and gone
leaving only a faint imprint of the past.
Nostalgia has no claim to the future.
Just a promise to die with strangers.
Alan Ford
I have been influenced by the
output of Neil Astley's Bloodaxe Publishers. Also Carol Ann Duffy, Clive
James,Thomas Hardy, Douglas Dunn's early work and other anthology poets. I have
written eight fiction books, including the satirical ghost series such as
Princess Diana's Ghost on Amazon. Other published works include various
articles,short stories in Brilliant Flash Fiction, and Academy of the Heart and
Mind magazines, song lyrics and poetry. The lyrics have received placements in
Song of the Year and the UK Song Contest.The poems have appeared in Conclave,
Down in the Dirt, Blue Lake Review, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Scarlet Leaf
Review and Ariel Chart literary magazines.