#930 - downsizing

 

22.vii.22

930

3.203

downsizing

 

there and not there

 

(plot for a one-act stage play)

 

to conjure sleep from a wheeze

go back to work

 

the Christmas empty

imagine bonbons

all these seats at a table might have been filled

whom should one resent then?

 

these are the guidelines for telling it

just to be knitting by the fire

 

nothing ever need be wasted

we find a home for all we have

 

one is embarrassed to be eating when they arrive

then again, spotted from a long way off

there’s time

must come around the long way

 

a room in a terrace all these decades before

but it’s as now of course

 

didn’t even first think

what are you doing there?

 

two of them quietly

then I saw it was three

on the bed behind

up to innocence

 

I was working

as out of the corner of my eye

 

at my desk

also elsewhere so

though it wasn’t the same in those days

 

do you find yourself like this in the past?

 

a little banter builds

 

I think it’s her on-line exercise class

they’ve come in

wrong room?

 

but certainly making themselves at home

 

one could almost forget them

and then they’d be gone

 

you weren’t there

but you’d be back soon

knew I had to fix this

 

there are always more

and why are you here?

at last I ask

blank faces for exasperation

 

general absences

people in particular

 

nor is this place any one that was

remember my father in another language

it could have been there too

 

you can smoke in the backyard

if you must

 

red rag to a bull

 

they all light up

 

new door midhouse appears

 

I’m ushering them out

or try to

blood pressure through the roof I guess

 

but it’s as if I’m irrelevant

they’re entitled

 

this is as much as I’ve got