Kitchen Landscape
By John Elcock
Sleep long fled the bedroom
on a path now vague, the stairwell blocked
by the jumbled mountain range of chairs.
So I must look out across the kitchen table
past a Corian lake of glacial green,
where dishes tumble as some vast moraine.
And a strip-light sends its silent lightning
into the echoing valley of the hall.
Alone in the wilderness. Night.
The distant jet lends a civilising air,
an abrupt click - and the fridge’s hum
brings it quickly down to ground. (No one hurt).
Meanwhile I have to sit
by the glowing embers of the kettle,
while Artex clouds hang heavy above my head.
The silence too is not so silent,
for pops and creaks emerge fox-like
from the caves in the floor
and ghosts in the freezer do their moonlit work.
At least the morning glimmers through the sodium
lights and the tap drips with a promise of rain.
Yet I must with weary tread, go back to bed and
climb the wooden hills, again.
Reproduced by permission of The Artel Press.
