This latest attempt at a poem, yet again produced and submitted in response to Andy Townend/Mara Eastern’s Poetry Rehab prompt https://wordpress.com/read/post/feed/31982590/833537613 fits in to my recent series of poems on urban issues, which have become, ironically, a more intensive concern, now I am virtually house-bound and see the city growing menacingly around me only through a small window.

Wind Eye

The old Norsemen tell us that a window

is originally little more than a breeze-block

letting in the draught

to clear the hut of smoke,

air it of damp.

*

Glass promised everything:

visions of the furthest galaxies,

the tiniest lactobacilli;

a framed view out onto a nice landscaped garden;

soaring curtain walls mirroring heaven and sky;

underwater flora;

a probe into the very soul.

*

But looking up out now

through the mashrabiya

of security bars and safety netting

at the tall apartment buildings

that obscure the moon,

each flat marked by the dripping backside

of an air-conditioning unit sticking out,

as the all-year-round fairy lights

of HD TVs and laptops

twinkle behind blinds,

there is a feeling

not of light refracted

but of darkness falling

and wonder

at what we have made of the world.