Roddy Lumsden

A H L O S T

Ornithogalum Dubium

Lame again, I limp home along Lawn Terrace
with a flowering sun star in a paper wrap

then back to the village with a lame cat
twisting and woeful in her cage.

Bread these days isn't baked to last:
how sad those posh loaves thudding off

in pine breadbins all around the Heath:
soulless latterday pets, frisky for a day

or two, then binned or thrown to foxes,
loaves just an inch of gloom below

the caged birds you notice in corners
of those same mansions when you seek