Lonely As a Cloud In April

LONELY AS A CLOUD IN APRIL I knew Great Aunt Lucy’s April outing to celebrate My failed exams would be a series of disasters, A slow motion flying April-fool joke, with my problems as ballast. We went to her favorite restaurant : The waiter offered me an education of pastries, While glowing over Wordworth’s golden host, Followed by the predictable surprise of her favorite theatre. We sat through a prison sentence of opera music; Then a driver-tour of the city’s scant attractions Was tonnage of boredom reduced in a finger-snap By his changed tone - about his childhood home ground. My life-sentence was commuted - In a blink I saw everything differently. I felt an orgy of interest in my head In the way a reflection in a puddle can appear In an instant to be a piece of sky-jigsaw Which has fallen to the ground. After that You can never again see it in the usual way. I gazed and gazed but little thought, so I fell asleep. 11 April 2021 (Note…with apologies to better poets like W Wordsworth and D Thomas) …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Entered in the April Poetry Contest (2021) of Regina McIntosh