FRUITCAKE

by Maurice Corlett

Although I see the
psychiatrist every six
weeks I am no fruit cake.
Depression is my curse
and the last bout that I
had was bloody murder.
 
But that is in the past now
and I am holding my own
against the dog.
 
The fruitcake that Lyn
made for John took
six weeks to find him
in Afghanistan. He sent
us an email this morning
with a photo of him and
the cake in his recently
flooded room.
 
He said that he had been
up country for weeks and
had spent a lot of time
in military airports and that
it was good to get something
from home.
 
We hope that he enjoys
his fruitcake and the
other presents that we
sent him. I think that it will
be a long time til we
see him again.
 
But that is the way of the
foreign correspondent – here
today and gone tomorrow. A
life that I would have given
anything for at his age.
 
But I made other choices.

Poet biography:
Maurice Corlett is a poet and prose writer from Wagga Wagga. He was born and raised in Newhaven on the south coast of England. A locale that inspired his early work. Sometime ago his short story – Reunion In Gunyah Creek was published in The State Of The Art. He has had poems accepted by fourW, an annual Australian journal.