Clouds

The brooding of clouds is a fallacy

but, there again, locked inside a house

in the held breath of a prolonged holiday

they can weigh us down, like an albatross.

Any yet I realise that I am not unhappy

I can fill the kitchen with the blues

with roast meat and wine-laced gravy

with red cabbage, with cinnamon and cloves.

Later, the wine glugged down

I notice my hands; something is wrong –

their slack skin like a Christmas goose

tells me, suddenly, that I have grown old.

The dark clouds are pressing in on me

they expand in my skull like a tsunami.