Building a shed

 

 

And so in a scowling gale, I pitch the roof

and hoist purlins and other terms I do not know –

man abuses gravity, the new gestalt.

I don’t know how I know how to do this

only that I that I do and that contentment

is the inevitable result.

 

From the twitching light of neighbours’ rooms

dancing with doom in a howling storm

I know this must seem faintly weird.

This flowerbed footprint is my Man Friday.

I must look to them like Robinson Crusoe

with my muddy slippers and Covid beard.

 

When you speak an image, it is said

that a new spirit enters the room.

But here, in a suburban garden

I am enclosing a volume of air

in order to fill it with words.

Each trimmed lawn is a failure of empathy.

.