Another Wasteland

As she cuts the grass, neighbours appear

Photo by Anatol Rurac on Unsplash

The mower soon whirrs to a bitter end
puttering sounds of a dying motor
as the day turns dusky red in
the garden’s silent green & the
summer heat makes a prisoner of
captured air & we gasp as oxygen
shoots off in different directions
beneath Stefania’s shed then up
into a swelling grey sky
when our druggie neighbour appears —
I see she’s at that grass again!
as if everything’s a bad habit as it may well be
& normal exists on a sliding scale
depending on his usage
how much he’s had that day.
We look over at his own patch
imagine towering conifers & arboretums
where the eye consumes a perfect wasteland
with nothing given nothing taken away
but the slow peace of entropy resting in dis-ease.

Copyright Simon Heathcote