This is a poem about that time between waking and sleeping, when we stop controlling our thoughts, and often our inner selves start to speak to us! We have our worries about the future, things we often won't admit to ourselves. The particular thought expressed here is the worry that many young people have - will my love outlive physical passion as we grow older together. Having survived forty happily married years, I'm here to tell you that it can and does!

I have long been fascinated by the Japanese haiku form of 5- 7- 5 syllables in three lines. Written in English, these cannot translate into Japanese directly. However, we can attempt the idea of encapsulating a thought, an incident in a few words. The Japanese masters always included a 'seasonal word' which told their readers which season was being written about. Even if you are not interested in the form itself, try reducing your poems to the minimum words necessary to carry your idea. It is a salutary exercise, and has a good effect on your verse.

Of course, you make your readers work harder at understanding the poem, but a good poem is like a good painting - it reveals itself gradually, sometimes over years. If you want to be explicit, write a text- book and forget about poetry! This poem pulls together random things I saw or felt during the year - winter to winter, and hopefully conveys some idea of the season.

We attended the funeral of a friend of a friend, held at Bolton Abbey, North Yorkshire, England. The site is very beautiful, by a river, far out in the country. As the cortege passed down the hill, one could hear the rush of the river, the cry of the curlews overhead, the intonation of the priest. It all made a strong impression on me, and I went home and wrote this poem for the survivor.

Loch Voil is a remote loch in the highlands of Scotland - a place of incredible beauty, which my wife and I visit whenever we have a walking holiday in the highlands. We were there on a lovely day last October; my wife painted a water- colour of the scene whilst I brewed the tea, took photographs - and thought about poems. When we tried to walk along the lochside, we found that this lovely place was littered with broken beer- bottles - the aftermath of many drinking- parties. The first reaction was anger, then a sadness for the perpetrators and the complete absence of a sense of beauty in their lives. This poem was the result.