The Lodger

You could figure it as a trapdoor,

blur of hinge and

                         down

into the unconscious of this stranger

moving around your garden like a trap—

making all the greens unstable

as the warble of nausea come bang up to greet you.

Bang to rights

is how he'd like to have your house. Cuckoo,

wool-wearing garden-dweller,

new-age Salvationist, holy among your cow-parsley

and roses.

               Meanwhile, the unaccustomed heat.

Meanwhile, a sky tunnelling upward—

sense of proportion—golden section

of elder hedge; then the disgraceful paddock gone wild.