Nearly Four

by Jeremy Lloyd







A teddy bear sits on a mattress one glass eye and threadbare paw

Looking at a cuckoo clock which tells it's nearly ten to four

Four o'clock is teddy's teatime, lots of friends and fancy cake

Although it's only pretend eating.... oh how long ten minutes take

Shadows grow on distant hillside, orange sun on glassy sea

All in his amber eye reflected, and still ten minutes left till tea.

The mattress striped is old and broken, rusty springs through stuffing show,

The cuckoo clock is also broken but how's a teddy supposed to know

Unaware he's been abandoned, that this is not the nursery cot

The hills and sea, just glass, old papers on a disused rubbish plot

A telephone that no-one answers, empty tins that once held tea,

The clock that still says nearly teatime, where can all the children be?