And then there's adolescence, that famous Festival of Angst eg

And trees that whisper in the watching air
Sigh only desolation and despair.

(and there's more but it's worse).

A long gap follows. In 1985 I was moved to attempt a cycle, which ended up as twelve poems, and which I called Poems for my Friend. It wasn't very good, but it was the first time I'd had something to say that had made me take poetry seriously as a medium eg

Disappearing Man

At four, his files become tomorrow’s.
His outline blurs, his substance drains,
his step loses its sound.
Phone don’t ring. No partner ask.
He’s gone to meet her.

Where is she, where’s the car,
the tardis to transport him
beyond the looking glass
to that bright inverse place
where he can be corporeal?

High windows stare. They will
identify him if he undissolves.
The sun slants through him
as through ice.
His feet start down the street.

A pause followed Poems for my Friend and then came jottings from time to time, such as this, in 1996, after the most difficult funeral I've ever been to (not that that's an excuse) -

BLACK-HAIRED PUPPY

A black-haired puppy
long and thin and loose
would come to our house

smiling to be let in,
friend of my heart’s own daughter
given to his own laughter,

and feet not quite on earth.
One day she said
‘Jamie’s been busted. If you had

a moment, could you
give him a reference for court?’
And I did, truth with art ...

it was our little bond. Later she said
‘Jamie says to thank you’
and I said, ‘Good, yeah.’

He was sharp and many-coloured;
if wise, not with the wisdom of the many.
Being Jamie

he loved bright surfaces
good times mad friends
right through the running of his sands.

He would have smiled ‘Not me’
if ‘Atropos,’ you said,
‘She’s the one that cuts the thread.’

Death from nothing
the rape of hope
and nothing’s all to reap -

gentle black-haired puppy
called back into the dark
from love
                   from everything.

And as summaries go, that should hold it up to May 2001, when I found pffa.