It seemed too cliched to be true:
The white-coated herald, avoiding eye-contact,
In slowed down time,
Read the prognostic proclamation, standing
As you sat, like something in a play or poem.
The instruments of future torture carefully described,
In graphic, legally required detail,
And you were sent home, to hug why-me each night,
And look over your shoulder for something you
Always felt lurking behind.
But then you saw the bark on birch:
So silver and smooth to the touch,
Smelled the richness of the soil underneath after rain,
And the beauty of the banal cut loose from all that anchored you,
Drifted free.
Silently, along dark streets, unbidden,
Hope cautiously slinks round corners, through swirling mist,
Jumps into obscure tatty gardens nearby,
And sinuously insinuates its way through
The narrowest of open windows
To curl up, small but warm, inside.