Quarantine decides
to broaden my horizons.
Reflections and shadows
on window panes
along the street
are domes, minarets, hills, rockets.
A trick of perspective
makes the fringe of blossom
clinging to the red-brick wall
resemble animals congregating
on a desert plain.
Mountains form in the sky,
break up, disappear.
Clouds enact centuries of mythology
on a parked car’s windscreen.
The dustbin-lid pond in the next garden
has me standing on the shores of Lake Baikahl.
The ping-pong table of a lawn
impersonates the Pampas.
Hold on, that daisy wasn’t there yesterday.
I feel a sudden panic for the coming days,
like a mouse’s terror on sensing
a cat crouched like a lion
between the giant Redwood trees
of the 5 tulips.
A newly-planted sapling
sticks its chest out
against a flurry of freezing winds
and promises to meet me here
in ten years’ time
My body’s confined.
My eyes skim the tree-tops.
My heart goes out to the whole world.
Aidan Clarke
1/4/2020