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…