Whitegates (II)

The privet hedge has been uprooted,
vistas opened. I step out of the car
look through the tall pine trunks
to the arched lawn now studded with box balls
along its flint wall, to the front door painted
a Farrow & Ball Cooking Apple Green,
new cerise hydrangeas against the white walls.
The courtyard where my rabbit lived is a carport.
 
In that house a presence clamped itself onto my back,
bit into the base of my skull, crippling me as I lay in bed.
And I called out to Gavin, Switch the light on!
but the bulb had blown so we went down the stairs,
fiddled with the fuse box, floodlit the lounge.
I swiped the entity off my back, flung it into my hand
– it sizzled across in black beads, searing a blister
into my palm                 and was gone.


Hélène Demetriades

If you have any thoughts on this poem,  Hélène Demetriades   would be pleased to hear them.