Jim Murdoch has been writing poetry for fifty years and has graced the pages of many now-defunct literary magazines and websites and a few, like Ink, Sweat and Tears and Poetry Scotland that are still hanging on in there. For ten years he ran the literary blog The Truth About Lies but now lives quietly in Scotland with his wife and, whenever the mood takes him, next door’s cat. He has published two books of poetry, a short story collection and four novels: Jim, not the cat.
Having
The problem with wants is we imagine they’re needs
but whenever we get a thing we thought we wanted
we soon realise it wasn’t what we wanted or needed.
Needs are all about what’s lacking in our lives—
not necessarily what’s simply absent,
that we’ve mislaid or lost and might even miss—
but things that, if we had to live without them,
would lessen and possibly injure us.
Missing things can be replaced.
Damaged things are challenging.
Some can be repaired but most
repairs are only temporary and,
eventually, all things disappoint.
This, of course, returns us to our original problem:
i.e. what we want, need and might someday need.
Friends are not hearts and hearts are not teacups.
The sad truth is both wants and needs are luxuries.
We make do with what is available.
Life rarely hands over what we want or even need.
We have what we have until we no longer have it.
But at least we had it, at least that.
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