From here the outdoors is a dream sequence.
Distorted as through stressed aquarium Perspex
rather than glass. When I was young I’d hang
my head upside down over the arm of the sofa
so the furniture gripped the ceiling’s shag
and historical blood rushed to the inverted heads
in family portraits. I marvelled at the unlofty
spaciousness we’d have in which to live.
But doorways were difficult to negotiate,
would become litigious. A raven large as a lion
lands, its talons hectoring bare branches
with what must be a sound like kitchen clatter,
dropped plastic cutlery, were I close enough to
catch it. You know, was outside not inside. And
minuscule. This reminds me of another lovely tableau:
in windy signatures along that rural route, the final
scrawl of poplar shadows at dusk. Memory can be
sketchy; embellishing atmospheric detail is essential.
The task has always been to keep the brain alive in time.
A calcium-binding protein found in cnidaria might
prevent decline; consider cinematic explosions
of the enhanced cosmic variety for a visual analogy.
When you think I’m inattentive, or when I step
cartoonishly high across thresholds, it’s because
I haven’t fully recovered from childhood.
A Portuguese man-of-war is a conglomerate
of non-sentient jellies, not the discrete creature
it appears to be. As we appear to be, for the most part.
In person, though, I am inevitably myself,
and can thread moments together even when
they happen as if they haven’t happened.