‘A fox is poised with cunning intent

The vole’s last energies will soon be spent

Old Reynard coils in deathly dance

This was the creature’s very last chance

The circle of life is made complete

Mother Nature’s will secrete.'

The marvels of nature, its beauty and savagery loom large in a new book that reveals the innermost thoughts and imaginings of a Yorkshireman.

Often deep, sometimes morose, always contemplative, Jim Emerton’s ‘verses, musings and original observations on a complex, wonderful world’ are original and thought-provoking.

‘My Life in Pieces, Poems and Paragraphs’ takes the reader on a journey into a truly eccentric psyche. It is insightful and thought-provoking.

The former student of Bradford College, now retired, has laid bare his thoughts on subjects ranging from the transience of celebrity - ‘one small flame in the fiery furnace of humanity’ - manic depression and death, about which Emerton observes:

‘From the moment of our birth

Death has us in its mighty grip.’

Well-travelled, Emerton draws upon his experiences from across the globe. The book’s short, pithy excerpts make it easy for the reader to dip in and out.

The supernatural and paranormal are clearly areas into which Emerton, regularly delves: ‘I have encountered mind reading by a very perceptive man in Delhi, two out-of-body experiences which changed my deepest perceptions of life on earth as a person.’

He calls his mind a ‘cyclone’, an apt description as he believes the world to be chaotic and uses his thoughts, set out here, as a form of escapism.

‘In the gardens of my head, the flowers grow, in waves of gold, red and blue, each and every hue.’

Horticultural references could be a nod to the years he spent as a member of the gardening team at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - alongside a young Alan Titchmarsh - after training at Askham Bryan College in York.

Details of the time he spent there are contained among other sections of autobiographical information.

The Mensa member and contributor returns time and again to nature. The fox, the wolf, the skylark, the buzzard, and a host of other creatures are deftly summed up in short, pithy lines.

His descriptions of landscape and nature are a delight, as in the following, describing the scene from a houseboat where he and friends cooked on a smoky paraffin stove: ‘as the moon cast her melancholy light against the seascape, plaintive cries of curlew haunted the dank air, grey seals surfaced and little terns, so graceful and magical, dived into the icy waters below.’

Emerton also has connections with Bradford through pigeon breeding and racing, a sport in which he excelled, competing internationally, and upon which he has a book due to be published later this year.

Sometimes, it is difficult to know whether these highly intellectual, darkly comic outpourings are tongue-in-cheek. The listing of X-factor and Britain’s Got Talent creator Simon Cowell, as a ‘legend’, one of seven, including Adolf Hitler, who Emerton refers to as ‘the axis of megalomaniac evil’. Famous artists, sportsmen and a film star - who else but Marilyn Monroe - make up the rest.

*My Life in Pieces, Poems and Paragraphs by Jim Emerton, is published by Mereo Books and is available from Amazon priced £7.