Pastoral

I’ve ruined it.
Thirty, forty years from now,
she’ll hear it again
and it won’t be just
a clarinet cuckoo
in a thicket of strings
but her long-dead mother
in an apron with French cheeses on it,
turning from the sink to say,
“listen, here it comes”.
*
The streetlamp
of my laptop flicks back on
and the automatic light upstairs
flutters two goldfish
that are the only living things
inside these walls,
not counting me.
*
Lilac buds
on his black sleeve
is how his pollen
requires me
to become
a clear night sky
in which new stars,
thousands of them,
are called upon
to bloom.

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