You can spend your whole life 
Making a list of “to do’s”
Travel with your wife
Or things just for youse

A week in Siena and Florence
Or at the tables in Monte Carlo
Fighting white water torrents
Or in Rome with Michelangelo

Whatever the date
However long the list
It’s nearly too late 
To recover what you’ve missed

Wipe the sweat from your brow
Review what’s in your bucket
Suddenly it’s clear now
The challenge can go f*** it

Crawl back to bed 
With coffee and toast
And then raise a glass
To the girl with the most

Oli 12 August

To walk through early morning mist …
Says she …. thats something on my bucket list
So I get to thinking what would be on my to-do list before I die
In no particular order – here I’ll try … 

# 1  
It was a national geographic illustration I spotted when I was small
That made such an impression on me now that I’m tall
Ascending  a rugged mountain pass through jungle to Machu Picchu
Is all I’ve ever really wanted to do 

#2 
Reading Ulysses on the 16 of June 
Hanging out with James Joyce’s Leopold Bloom 
Dressed up in a boater and Edwardian garb
Hanging out at the Davey Byrnes  Dublin pub 

#3 
I see reflections of a gaff-rigged clinker boat
Canvas and paint art-studio afloat 
Anchor in a coral lagoon not far off Tahiti 
A real life Adam Troy paradise adventure circa 1960s TV
It would be bliss 

#4 
Pacific Palms club Wallace lake
Salivating at what’s on my plate
Mud crab claws huge and juicy
Waitress hands me my bib – it’s ALL just for me!

#5
At the pantheon in eternal city of Rome 
arms and legs spread akimbo under the dome
I hear muffled voices echoing down through ages 
where are you going? Call the sibyls and sylphs and sages  

#6 
Cycle from Varanasi to foothills of the Himalaya
Looking over villages from the river Ganga 
Thin air I breath passing plantations of tea
Base camp Everest I’m going to see

#7 
Swimming the Dardanelles strait I’m trying 
In the wake of not Shelly & Keats but lord Byron   
The freezing Hellespont from Europe to Asia 
To the poet (and me) his greatest achievement and pleasure 

Jason August 2020