Life is Worth Living

Life is Worth Living

For trees, for cats, for poems, for horses.

For flowers, for dragonflies, for film.

For picking up my guitar to play

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or pottering round the garden

on an early Spring day,

clearing leaves, tending compost.

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Life is worth living for compost?

It takes all sorts.

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Life is worth living to buy a random CD

in a charity shop, get it home, play it—

it’s brilliant—and it was only a quid.

It makes up for all the ones that were shite.

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Life is worth living for tea—

proper tea, with caffeine in.

For banana and peanut

butter sandwiches,

butternut squash and spinach

lasagne for supper.

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Life is worth living for a new taste,

trying a fresh thing, finding out

it’s fab. Life is worth living

-

for orgasm.

Life is worth living

-

to visit

a Lowry exhibition, feel

his isolation, recognise you

really like his work, burst

into tears, look like an idiot.

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Life is worth living to feel

life is worth living.

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Life is worth living for dogs, walks

round Beacon Hill, The Outwoods,

down the canal.

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Life is worth living

for mushrooms: fruits

of the earth, threads

of mycelium supporting

life through a symbiotic relationship

as it facilitates

water uptake to flora.

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Life is worth living

to see, with clarity,

cooperation is what makes

life worth living.

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Life is worth living to express

how life is worth living,

whatever the emotion.

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Life is worth living to sleep,

to dream.

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Life is worth living because

the opposite is not.

An earlier version of this poem appeared in the second volume of Brightsparks/Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust smoking cessation pamphlet.