Lizard

Today Barbault’s basket disperses

leaving us stranded where we should be;

bells clanging from the church & in my head

a thousand years of history at my feet.

Open the door to the other side of dreams,

a white lizard rises from my bed leaving

tracks across the silk pillow:

politicians bite the dust & become their

own weapon of mass destruction

Canigule brings waves of heat to melt the tarmac.

Here we are exactly where we land

shifting into another day of fleeting feelings.

The same & not the same,

already long past our, ‘Sell by’ date.

If only I’d known how time would etch & erode

it all seemed so unlikely, so far away, but now days pass

like minutes, skittish almost in their desire to disappear

leaving me gasping for breath, reaching for a certainty

lost long ago, without notice.