Source: Unsplash, downloaded https://unsplash.com/photos/y0z500BQRtY (14.2.2021.)
Nothing Withheld
My not-so-old neighbor found living
a burden so quietly dropped it last week.
Ordinary things in this 1950’s blonde brick
block of single bedroom flats annoyed
then tormented her. A nose blowing,
door closing in the wind. Her ceiling
was someone’s floor; listen them heels.
Her bedroom wall / someone else’s wall
and they sometimes scream at a screen
because family lives in another country.
It’s no convent so no vows of silence
or abstinence of any kind. I hear neighbours
occasionally doing things with occasional
guests but they also say, Hi! or Nice day
when we meet at mailboxes. Neighbourly.
If I awake feeling blue after disturbed sleep,
I go for a dazed walk after breakfast;
I’m not a prisoner but routine’s the same
if I awake feeling any other colour.
By the time I get round the park,
there’s generally change within.
One moves and moves on and there’s
a next coffee up ahead. I re-enter beehive,
renewed, knowing there’s a dab of honey.
Not so the frazzled empress of next door.
She has departed for a smaller, quieter
place with perfectly silent residents.
About the Author: Originally from Saskatchewan, Allan Lake has lived in Vancouver, Cape Breton, Ibiza, Tasmania & Melbourne. Poetry Collection: Sand in the Sole (Xlibris, 2014). Lake won Lost Tower Publications (UK) Comp 2017 & Melbourne Spoken Word Poetry Fest 2018 & publication in New Philosopher 2020. Chapbook (Ginninderra Press 2020) My Photos of Sicily.
