Timelapse

Crows scuffle in great glossy goth fights on the tv aerial;
a squirrel shins up the parched bark of next
door's eucalyptus.
The smoke of barbecue drifts into my face,
a meaty spectre.
Children shriek and jeer as the splash of hoses
sparks up above the fences in glitter drops.
Church bells keep to time,

they're the only things that do.
If our day was a timelapse I would stay static
in my deckchair on the stones
while Jo tasmanian devils it around the garden:
sowing seeds, fetching gin and tonics, watering pots, bringing out lunch, sinking driftwood in among the beach stones like Derek Jarman might have done.
Our battery operated radio plays classical music because everything else reminds us
of what's out there.
Beyond the fences.
Through the barbecue smoke.

But here,
you can forget the world when we're in this little faux Dungeness of our own making.

Another gin and tonic.
The squirrel returns with a rival:
they scratch at each other in the branches of someone else's tree.
I want to film it, but I don't do it in time.
How will anyone else know about it though?
I think,
committing it to my lockdown memory bank.

The sun has shown its face to every corner of the garden now,

and I've followed it round all day.

When it's time to go inside I dont want to, 

I haul the door open grumpily: 

everything looks blue to me,

and the latest headlines nag.