by John Field 2015
Last night fear came at me
Through an open window
When a rogue cloud
With theatrical ambitions
Out of a science fiction novel
Anchored itself in front of the moon,
Turning the sky
Into a vast inverted glass
Of black champagne,
Each star a stationary bubble.
Quick and intangible as a wink
The lawn chairs on our patio
Undid themselves
Like objects in a fever dream
Remembered but no longer seen,
And beyond the place
Where our garden used to be
I could just make out
The clean-picked bones
Of a patch of bamboo.
Eventually the rogue cloud
Had someplace better to go
And the moon cried,
“Look at me! Look at me!
Here I am again,
A shiver of light from another era,
Back again, your heart’s keeper.”
What I child I was,
Just another false alarm,
But so much of that cataract
Had settled in my head
That before I went to bed
I drank a shot of vodka
And took a sleeping pill.
***
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