Again I dreamed that complex edifice
For a while I’d had a bedsit in a rear wing
You locked your bike to a back-lane fence,
wended between outbuildings, climbed
fire escape, squirmed through window. Now
I was trying to move in to the top floor of the main block where a lot of students and workers and a few retired eccentrics had units in a group around a common room where people were coming and going and leaving magazines lying about in too many colours and flavours but all I wanted
was a tidy flat with white furniture
and blue bowls; a kitchen with everything
clean; a small fridge singing
efficiently; a living room with nothing
overstuffed. It was there, I knew,
somewhere within the clamour and mess,
waiting for my key. A plain door.
First published in Meniscus 5(1), June 2017
From A coat of ashes
Jackson 