Owed to a discarded urn

One cruel night a white urn stood outside

the Wellington in the Strand, that boot on the foot

of Theatreland whose tide of patrony

goes out nightly on its raft of yearning

returning with punctured hopes, deflated,

to sink into bitter beside a cordial fire.

The tide goes out and there the urn stood

stoppered with sand with ashes on top

and below that, surely no one we’ve heard of,

remains of none whose name ever burned

in pearl-strung lights or neon, or even

played a full season, for the very next evening

it was gone, appearing for one night only.

(c) 2013 Slush Poet