Heading home from the open-plan office,
where hourly the ceiling sinks lower
onto his back, he kicks through
dying leaves. No more open-plans,
finished.
At home in the rising lift he crouches
under the mirrors.
The lock dead-bolted, he slides open
the balcony door, reels towards
the balcony edge, thrills to the yawning
drop.
Three tiny nuns below
hand out brochures selling God
knows what. He pictures tumbling
them into his keepsakes box, also tumbling in
the job debacles. He could shut the lid
and hangar the lot.
Flipping open the box, he picks out a leaf,
cloudy orange flecked black.
He charts a finger over its pale veins
and waves it hovering off the edge,
down, now a vacant speck.
He picks out one more leaf,
cranes over, follows its flight helter-skelter.
Back in the living room
his phone rings.
A flatbed truck trawls past the nuns,
a jumping castle on its back
billowing golden, patterned with fawns.
He ponders landing in its forecourt.
What an entrance!
And what if by miracle
he should spring back a new man,
unflappable, grounded?
