The Armchairs

came with the flat and struck on the bolster
produce shimmering dust. No matter.
In them we write. Side by side and facing out
over the sunlit grounds of the college
we’re soon to leave for what they call the real world.
(A phrase which means to me the civil war
my parents fled; the women in your
books who grasp the thistle of their lives; and not,
as the hard-nosed mocker of our generation prates,
the necessity of moving to London, and working a job one hates …)
But there we are, in the meantime, laptops on laps
and wires happily crossed. Where the silver birch goes
for gold and settles for bronze. Then blue.
Then grey. We work so well together – who knew?



Sea Break
...