Asylum

Back with the morning,
white-coated greetings,

stinging questions,
drone straight at me,

then swarm past,
turmoil in their wake,

a whirlpool of noise,
muddying the air,

spinning, sucking me
into its still-centre

of thrumming silence;
and I curl myself up

in my rolled-up vacuum,
my solitary

where I hang out my days,
one by one, back turned

to the here-and-now
peeping in, rattling keys.

Still, after the pills,
a nightingale sings;

the trees have sparkles
in their hair;

wide-armed, I can
inhale the world,

roam knee-deep in darkness,
and be myself till dawn.

.