Twilight hues threw a perfect bull’s eye on the drip heavy spider’s web

that still filled a perfect pie slice on the grubby window pane,

the slow sun drew shadow shapes on the flocked chimney breast

with the fading ghosts of beech leaves and telephone poles.

I closed the door, started making quiet camp with the chairs,

nodding to my old friends the barometer, the clock

and the old metronome, that steady untocked ancestral monument,

I patiently pre-flight checked those imaginary gauges

as Surrey’s eternal gulls circled outside squalling sadly.

The angle-poise hung over my phantom cockpit

making it warm, making it sacred, making it real,

I grasped the wooden spoon joystick and flew

long low passes swooping over the enclosure

checking the forever perimeter that held us all.