The Isolation Ward
In the company of Wordsworth’s shadow
Can a poet raise his head from the darkness
these days? Can he take in the company of daffodils?
Or would he only be able
to say, “the world is too much with us”?
They all seem to say the same thing
when someone departs the party of life too early;
that he was too good for the world,
that he was crushed underfoot, like
a sodden rose petal on a wet footpath
on a stormy Monday night.
Why do they never say, he was a square peg
in a round hole, he was a quare fellow
who refused to adjust to the simple
niceties of an ordinary life?
The breeze is pleasant on my shoulders this morning,
even though the day is darkly cloudy.
I’ll enjoy my coffee, and the company
of cats and dead musicians.
I will escue the company of remotely controlled
humans, and the pointlessness of unpleasant
arguments more about the rhetoric
than the ideas and their consequences.
I will wander lonely as a cloud.
It will be a fine day in the Isolation Ward.
