2. Homesteader
Coatham Hall is where I come from.
The nettles in the woods were headhigh
And I used to carve out a network of paths
By slashing furiously with my trusty stick.
>From the jungle where the trees had been cut down
I built secret homes of the undergrowth.
Caves. Avenues for bicycles. Connectedness.
I was ten years old when I began daydreaming.
Susan's garden is my pet wilderness in Bath.
Below the patio I had built last year are my widow's weeds.
Wild rose bushes and rampant blackberries.
Intermeshed into my private constructed sacred place.
It was there I went to discuss when the schizophrenia hit me.
I believed I spoke with John Keats down those steps.
Then I went back to the kitchen to pick up the knife.
It is twenty years since I built Susan's garden.
On the World Wide Web I have set up my little crannies.
Interlinked archives of poem and history. Rabbit warrens.
Hypertexted linkages the reader submerges in for months.
Hundreds of files maged by certainty of existence.
An electronic epitaph. Works of a lifetime.
Grownup writing down the dreamscape
Believing it was all magic and real,
Then finding the crystal broken.
Nearer sixty now than fifty I have slept
For near half a century in the Neverneverland.
It is cruel to awake and find that the dreams have vanished.
All's left is a homestead on the Frontier
And a batch of unwanted books.
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