No There There

Ascent of the Blessed by Hieronymus Bosch

Rabbits would explode as we paused to reload,
Blown to the winds their marrow-bone jelly,
Now I’m sitting on my own somewhere
Admiring the stained glass windows.
Sick light, in single shafts
On cold concrete floors.
My eyes bled as I turned my head
And dreamed of a time
When the wind is a raw, guttural laugh
And slaloms through the streets like a press-gang.
Bouquets mean nothing to the man
Who was clinically dead for five minutes –
He said to his friends when they asked
How it felt, that the next one to ask, well, he’d show them…
He’d had to hunt through fog and rain
To find the light of the oncoming train,
Which he took for tunnel’s end.