~DONNA PUCCIANI~

JET LAG

---

 

The sun dazzles the sheep on the hill
and glazes the brick houses
tumbling down to the village green,
and children burst out of school
chirping and flinging their satchels at each other,
and the markets heave with shoppers fingering fruits.
I sit nodding at the tram stop, chin lolling
on my chest, an unread newspaper
slipping from my hand.

As the moon bumps the sun out of the darkling sky,
and the pub grows warm and smoky
with evening conversation,
and a schoolboy out too late kicks a tin can
down the alley, my eyes droop over a pint,
and my head floats light as bubbled ale.

When dawn dips the treetops yellow,
the lark blesses the milkman clinking bottles,
and newspapers are flung at a hundred houses,
my buzzing blood begins to quiet as the world wakens,
my head pummelled by a purple sky.
Red-spangled eyes, dry and burning, lead my mind
to its own dim hayloft, where I burrow
into the scented bark, my body
a large bruise on the cheek of morning.

Life assumes a strange choreography,
out of sync with the rhythm of the natives,
still when they dance, dancing when they sleep.
Victim of transatlantic madness,
my body twitches to its own tango,
sets paralysis drooling on a pillow,
slides into sleep at odd moments, soporific
as a lamb nestled in the cleavage of misted hills.

© by Donna Pucciani