“Gaps”

 (A Space Odd Ditty)

So where do all the gaps go when we take away the pins?

Do they stand there on the diamond ‘til another game begins?

Do they practise dodging dodgy balls and keeping out of sight?

Or bitch and curse (or even worse) -  or are they too polite?    

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And what do all the gaps do when another season’s done?

Just hibernate and lose some weight, or, tempted by the sun,

Decide to take a gap-year break, then suddenly remember

The missing few still going through from April to September

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But where would Skittles be today without those fiendish chaps?

(On shiny bowling alleys with an extra pin perhaps,

Which sounds like bliss – we’d only miss the things we’re aiming at

By going wide on either side, and where’s the skill in that?!)

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A skittler’s born to take the scorn that gaps alone can bring -

The constant threat of what you get for ‘flirting with the king’;

We need to feel the danger that our last remaining ball

Will whistle by and wits will cry “Why was (s)he born at all?”

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So love that gap, that beaver-trap, unbaited but unseen;

The empty space that knows its place, the by-pass, go-between;

Our inter-pin banana skin, our passport-to-the-pit,

The one-to-miss, our nemesis... our point-less piece of kit