Poetry has long been a passion of the artist with poetry published in a number of national and regional publications.

 

The working class beret

with apologies

 

 

Academic clothes carefully unkempt

casual,

grey-black hair streaming early seventies long,

flowing,

shock of shagginess

the delicately dilapidated beret,

topping it off.

 

Ah, the beret!

Badge of rakishness from some by-gone conference,

too corny not to be chic,

always on,

in class, akilter, edgy,

in the faculty senate, rebellious

in his darkly lit office, alone

in the arms of his student lover

where he is young again, if just for the moment.

Without the cap, she will flash away

sniggering

and he wants desperately to be seen as dashing in her eyes he sees so shallow.

 

The beret sustains,

that while once he dreamed of venerability,

sagacity

emeritus

he was so much older in that dream.

Surely he was younger than that now.