These are fleeting thoughts
 
    like children who ring the doorbell
and run away. Sitting in the kitchen
I am thinking my world has grown
 
too small. Two metres, how quickly
that distance has become our lens,
opportunities no longer stretching
 
far as the sky is blue but stuck
up so many one-way streets. Are there clerks
still writing copperplate in a meticulous
 
slow hand, are there islands where no man
has ever stepped? The world is too small
now, smaller still in these last years,
 
what is inside has been piling up,
silting the drains. I don’t have a new
overlay to combat spiky virus cells
 
circulating like planets. Perhaps
I could put my fears in a cosy cottage
tin, the kind of cottage that does not
 
exist except in fairy tales, I could
squeeze them into the cavity wall insulation,
fling them far out to the ocean
 
where there is always something
unfinished. This life is measured
without a ruler, heel to toe, or in cubits,
 
while the greedy clock still ticks.
I was always unsure of the correct
orbits, how close was too close?
 
On a far wall the sky is enclosed
by four small panes of glass, spotted
curtains flounce an indifferent fandango.
 
Tina Cole

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