She said she was killing time
before it killed her,
dragged her to her long home.

Heroic faith, constant as pain,
savage as her fierce loneliness,
was no match for the shadow's grim cloud.

Dull sleep stole empty afternoons.
Darkness she shared with flickering shades
dying on screen while she died silently screaming.

Whispering Ted Lowe described difficult snookers,
from which, if Dennis escaped,
she'd smile, light her fiftieth cigarette that day,
and wonder how it ever got so very late.

James Mills

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/snookered/