SECOND Wind is the title of a lively new anthology featuring three distinguished poets – Douglas Dunn, Vicki Feaver, and Diana Hendry – each of whom challenges with individual flair stock views on ageing (Saltire Society in association with the Scottish Poetry Library, £7.) Here is one of Diana Hendry’s contributions.

CALLERS

Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms

Inside your head. – Philip Larkin

Well yes, maybe I am an old fool

For there is a lighted room inside my head

Where folk I know – alive or dead – come to call.

It’s like the foyer of a grand hotel,

And though I’m out of sight I watch them all.

Often it’s my children, as they were when small.

Yesterday a friend I haven’t seen in years,

My brother-in-law who died last spring,

And a girl I used to know quite well as school.

None of them stays long or knows they’re here.

I watch them look about then hurry on.

It pleases me to think I might appear

As guest or ghost in lighted rooms elsewhere.