XVI – An Art Deco Hermit Grotto

Of late the soul on its obsession dwells:
that quaestio subtilissima, The Shed.
“Hoc aedificavi”. Within, that smell
of treated timber overwhelms the head,
the spirituous dropsy of a shrine
where melancholy lotos eaters pray.
Two gardens hence, a plangent strimmer whines.
There’s shouting, drunken, coarse. The sky is gray.
Focus instead on how the decking curves,
the cool asymmetry and distressed oak,
the glass refracting – oh, my shattered nerves! –
like granite underneath a line of coke.
A bosky cave for bikes, and eke a desk
where poetaster scrawls his high burlesque.