A starter British passport,
now with a French one too,
I can vote in both and put down roots
in either, and stroll through

eGates and customs checks
head high, as one of us,
legitimately pukkah, blessed
by birth/life/luck, and thus 

with paperwork in order
should copper or gendarme
ask me who on earth I am:
I smile and keep my calm

and my right to an annual break
upon a sunlit beach
where seas digesting some who yearned
my paradise to reach

lap peacefully as though
the summer days could last
as far into the future as
they failed to in the past . . .

*****

Tom Vaughan writes: “The older I get, the more I ask myself the question: ‘Where would we be without our (double) standards?’.”

‘One of Us’ was first published in Snakeskin.

Tom Vaughan is not the real name of a poet whose previous publications include a novel and three poetry pamphlets (A Sampler, 2010, and Envoy, 2013, both published by HappenStance; and Just a Minute, 2024, from Cyberwit). His poems have been published in a range of poetry magazines, including several of the Potcake Chapbooks and frequently in Snakeskin and Lighten Up Online. He currently lives in Brittany.
https://tomvaughan.website

Illustration: RHL and ChatGPT