"Art is useless, but so is life."*

Lying on a sofa with my dog curled beside me,
I think of these things:
a fish held still in freezing water;
a weed seed in winter earth;
a child lying curved in the womb;
a poem, wriggling in the brain,
that has not yet crawled onto its page.

None of much practical use.
I'm glad they exist.

*This sentence is taken from an article by the theatre director Richard Eyre in the Guardian, March 2003.