Ever since I've lived alone

(since 1966, in fact) people have "dropped in".
For the first few years it didn't bother me,
I even welcomed one or two of them
with open arms (or, sometimes, fly).
But soon I found it tedious, especially
when I was painting, tubes scattered on the floor
(I painted on my knees, 'in all humility').

I find it impossible to say don't come, 
I like my solitude,
or come by mutual arrangement only;
come, take me to a megalith -
or something else of interest or fun.

Somehow I have always attracted
lonely, bored, rejected people.
So they've arrived and bored me.
Is it that I'm too good a listener
or just too easy to dump loneliness upon ?

Some, with whom I lost patience (in an unruly outburst)
were so aggrieved that they never got in touch again.
People I would have liked to visit tended not to come..

Even now a lonely 'burden on the state'
(much younger, less robust than I) drops by three times a week
to ease the burden of his isolation  - with a tot of  La Réunion rum.