Nick Hawkins most recent poem to appear here was Forthwit’ and Child (April 2011). Of this poem, Nick says: “Being held prisoner in the land of the free is something we are so unaccustomed to, but in snowfall last year in the UK (and I guess in the USA too) many of us have been sentenced to “time” at home.” Don’t you love remembering winter in the middle of summer?
Manic Bear in a Hole
By Nick Hawkins
By Nick Hawkins
Like a lion caged or a manic bear in a hole,
I frequent the hallway of familiar footsteps,
back and forth like a human yo-yo rolling between rooms,
suffering from kaleidoscopic cabin fever
There’s only so many times one can bathe, wash hair, watch
tv, play solitaire, and drink tea whilst attempting to throw
snowballs at unrecognisably disguised garden furniture
invading our world
Like a writer jailed without muse …
I sit in a downtown bar resembling my kitchen, drinking cordial,
wondering whether anything other than snow can infuse my
colourless eyes into watching nothing.
Bringing down the curtain on another unending evening of
concentrated solace the moon gives me a different view of this
blanket not keeping me warm, it restricts me in this “land of
the free” by posting sentinels of ice, stagnating as poised
daggers outside every pane of glass.
Not even my mind can be set running and I’m left with only
sleep as the escape hatch to crawl through and find
sanctuary.
Like a caged lion or a manic bear in a hole, I wake in
anticipation of prowling the hallway once more, chasing the
yo-yo man from yesterday into another kaleidoscope mixture
of tomorrow and perhaps the day after …
