Inside and Outside

Sitting inside I type,
analysing novels.
I learn about the secret Muslim marriage
called a sigheh, recalling seventeenth-century Persia.
There’s a psychiatrist detective hero with Parkinson’s,
a Swedish writer who died too young,
an ex-memoirist who’s astounded his critics
with his breathless first novel.
I conjure up other people’s fictional worlds,
I tell people whether to spend their money
on eight new novels.

Outside a grey bird, wrapped in a brightly coloured bathmat,
stops breathing, wing broken.
My cat, tired from the chase and capture,
eats his supper of mincemeat.
Outside his prey lays his head in his
wing, and quietly gives up the fight.

(Published in Green Dragon 6)