Elephant Small Vol 2 Page 4

  Rise to the challenge with dignity

  Embrace each task with humility

  Approach the doubts of the critical

  With an attitude, analytical

  Perform to your best ability

  Modestly; without ceremony

  First amongst equals, the first to achieve

  First term in office, a change we believe

  Given a second term, what irony

  No need to change the ‘Change’ policy

  38. Regret

  Had those hasty words remained

  Unsaid

  And those broken promises

  Been kept

  How could we be sure

  We’d have no regrets?

  In the long term

  Things may turn out for the best

  Lessons learnt from past mistakes

  Inspire

  A more disciplined approach

  To words and deeds

  Pre-empting cause, effect

  And consequence

  And avoiding

  Repetition of regret

  In making future plans

  We should

  Remember the past

  And with hindsight

  We may

  Look back and smile

  All those errors

  We can

  Put down to experience

  So that this time

  We shall

  Go the extra mile

  As we lay this ghost ‘Regret’

  To rest

  Exorcise our demons

  Start afresh

  Walk with confidence

  While acknowledging

  Credit due to past regrets

  For our success

  39. Another Day; Another…New Year?

  Is it New Year again, already?

  It seems like only yesterday

  But, then again, perhaps it was

  Time flies so fast, it’s hard to say

  As one year ends, another New Year

  Rides the cycle of repetition

  But who can say which is New Year’s Day?

  Each culture has its own tradition

  Was New Year’s Day the first of the first

  As Gregorian calendar states?

  Eastern Orthodox Church year begins

  The fourteenth (first, by Julian dates)

  Back in Old Russia, the fifteenth day

  Of the first month was Happy New Year

  And one of twelve animals greets us with

  ‘Kung Xi Fat Choi’; you know I refer

  To Chinese New Year; the year of the Ox

  Lunar cycle, twenty sixth, just gone

  But this could occur, depending on year

  Between Jan and Feb twenty one

  Then in Japan, twenty seventh of Jan

  The tradition has been preserved

  Yet in Tibet, New Year is set

  Jan thru Mar, when Losar is observed

  In case I missed you in January

  I’ll repeat it for your benefit

  ‘Happy New Year to one and all’

  But that isn’t the end of it

  On the first of March, in old time Venice

  They held their New Year festival

  And March sees the Vernal Equinox

  Some found this date more logical

  Traditional springtime ceremonies

  Mark the old year, over and done

  Tamil Nadu, thirteenth, fourteenth March

  Baha’i – Naw Ruz – day twenty one

  Bengali, centrally on day fifteen

  In Kashmir, the nineteenth, by the way

  Thelemic New Year, moon permitting

  On day twenty…give or take a day

  Saka is Balinese, Javanese

  On March thirty, New Year is beckoned

  In Andhra Pradesh, it’s Tulugu

  On March, or April the twenty second

  To all you modern-day April Fools

  An excuse to joke and play

  But April the first, was the first of the year

  To Assyrians, back in the day

  Also in April, the sixth day sees

  In UK, the New Tax Year begin

  While on the thirteenth, the Sikhs celebrate

  And their own New Year is let in

  From the thirteenth to the fifteenth day

  Treat the New Year with TLC

  In Thailand, Laos and Cambodia

  April’s three days of festivity

  ‘Sawasdee Pi Mai’, the greeting in Thai

  As Songkhran water battles take place

  Get soaking wet…or try to stay dry

  If you find you can’t take the pace

  New Year in French Republican times

  Was the twenty second September

  And Diwali repeats annually

  In October or November

  November thirty; St Andrew’s Day

  Or the Sunday closest to this date

  Is Roman Catholic Ecclesiastic

  New Year for priests to celebrate

  40. Eternal

  I wouldn’t want eternal life

  A hundred years would do for me

  I couldn’t take the stress, the strife

  Of living for eternity

  Loss of my hair, teeth, faculties

  Would make me wish for death’s dark door

  I couldn’t cope without all these

  An OAP for evermore

  I’d try to end it with a knife

  Unless I could be shown the proof

  That, given with eternal life

  The promise of eternal youth

  About The Author

  Stanski is the kind of guy who doesn’t do things by half measures.

  For example, he’s the guy who went to Thailand in 1999, to see in the New Millennium.

  He enjoyed it there so much that he decided to stay on for a while.

  He didn’t return to the UK until October…

  October 2010…!

  Stanski began writing in earnest in 2005 while recovering from a motorcycle accident, in the northern city of Chiangmai, in which he sustained serious head injuries.

  Find Stanski on Facebook

  https://www.facebook.com/stan.ski.9

  More examples of verse by Stanski can be found on his Blog, ‘Elephant Small’

  Crawling Distance

  In Decline

  The Night Jasmine

  The Fourth Millennium

  Hotel 27

  A Fetish For Frustration

  Elephant Small Vol 1