For a week now you have felt uneasy,

noticing signs. With skies even brighter

than those you dreamed of, you sensed a frenzy

in the crazed speck you crushed on a worktop.

 

Mapping imaginary lines across

your kitchen’s granary tiles, they have sent out

explorers – hewers and drawers –  to probe

your landscape of leakage and spills.

 

Tracking down their base to a crack beneath

the back doorstep, you lift a mat, raising

the lid on what, till then, had seemed a time

for wine and laid-back alfresco lunches.

 

Merely to know they are simmering there

– obsessives wired to a common cause – 

makes your scalp sizzle. They are all over

the fissures dividing mind from matter.

 

The worst room in your head is one

with a plaque that reads infested. Behind

the dark bureau your skirting board is dust.

There are creatures there with dragonish wings.

 

Feeling bad, you’ll try hot water, powder,

the sweet adhesive gels they’ll pass from one

to another. It is all a question

of space. There is no way it’s personal.