LIGHTS OUT!

These are troubled times to live in, when daily, the threats of global war, a massive, natural catastrophe or the emergence of an uncontrollable virus, are ever in our consciousness thanks to the strident voices of online news sources.

ONCE UPON A TIME, THE END

Why have the lights twice blinked and why

does my phone fall silent as a stone

and the PC screen now, suddenly,

transform itself to a mourning black

and the dog seek refuge underneath

the chair where I sit distractedly,

overcome with a strange anxiety?

Why does the evening sky explode 

with a yellow fierceness in the west

and the beech trees, out by the garden edge, 

seem to lose their outline suddenly

as the lights go out and the TV stops

and the dog begins to rend its skin 

as though it alone felt the end begin?