In 1975, this probably incapsulated how I was feeling two years after the loss of my relationship with Jane. My friend Ray played a lot of music and Paul Simon was one favourite. I used a few lines from I Am An Island to get into this poem - the quotes are acknowledge, the poem leans on them but are my own misery writ large. I've always had lots of books to read, music to listen to and poetry to write and understand, so I felt like Simon's protagonist bar the December snow. I know that at least one of my friends, Cath, read this one and I think a few others, and encouraged my writing.

Other than the quotes, 3 verses of 5 lines (the last has an extra hanging line). It uses a rhyme scheme that I find useful in such small scale. The lines are not within verses, but across them. In this case, the end of each line rhymes with the corresponding line in the other verses (so A-B-C-D-E  A-B-C-D-E  A-B-C-D-E. The last line of verse 3 is unique.

Two minor changes only, so no original poem provided. The 4th line of verse 4, it originally read "Of tedious" - following online 3 which ended with "concentration", I added "Camp" to start line 4. Line 6 originally started with "And" which was superfluous, so I ditched it.