MY PURPOSE
After Gary Larson
Yesterday I found my purpose.
It was down the back of the sofa.
Not as big as I’d remembered,
it was covered in some kind of fluff.
I found it alongside a couple of pencils
and a foreign coin.
I brushed it off, and held my purpose
in the palm of my hand.
Wasn’t much to write home about.
I put it on the mantelpiece
with my old Ian Fleming novels
and my third-place prize from that
poetry competition in 1998.
Now I sit staring at my purpose,
the one I’d never given
much thought to.
Might put it in the attic for a while;
the cat is bound to knock it
off the shelf.
