I live in Sibelius Street

I live in Sibelius Street

all secret gardens

and quiet whispers.

Shy winds feel up bricks

with tentative fingers

around cold corners.

I live in Sibelius Street

where cats stand in quiescence

in leafy bowers.

And chimes sound quiet

warnings in gnarled branches.

Sometimes I wonder if anything

exists beyond these walls,

or does it all stop here to

plunge into milky nothingness?

My lonely thoughts resonate

in the bone-dry cavities of my brain,

latent whisperings and mutterings

the only response.

It ate my cat you know – this yard

absorbed him,

assimilating him into the fog of its periphery,

at night I hear its infant-like mewling,

reproachful and lost I ache.

I have become an insubstantial thing,

wandering this alien landscape,

with trees dry yet weeping,

the chuckle of strange creatures

and rustle of birds,

I’m sure are long extinct

and I feel us all recede.

– From the forthcoming book: Bag of Skin