In the Time of Shrinking
Everything falls — we are in the time
of the world’s shrinking. First it was tooth
fairies & elves, later Santa Claus —
with them all notions of innocence
as each halting veil lifts & you’re
pushed into the world which you
thought you wanted but never truly did.
Later, your telescope eye focuses on
all those wilting shops, demise of the
small town life. Very soon, you too
could be boarded up, identity stolen
right to speech annulled. I am looking
for a seed among the farmers but they
say they have none, robber barons
took the lot, replaced them with their own
& in the high street of the plywood town
I ask a ghost — what was the name of that
shop, you remember? Oh, but I don’t,
he says, unless you mean Tesco? Which
in any broken town appears as oasis yet is
really mirage — while for some it’s a church
where they bow, just not to God.
Copyright Simon Heathcote
