The Plot

The key is already as dated
as those ubiquitous, archaic phone lines
which our words hung on:
we still talked in analogue back then.
If I remember it right, and plots always escape me,
the wire-taps weren’t working out for them,
it turned out that no one was speaking at all
and the burnt phones were abandoned,
left muttering to themselves out in the rain.
The plot hung by a thread, like a wire,
barbed and distraught, stray thistledown, sheep’s wool.
One night every other tree in the park
was felled. One became a diagonal slide,
water gusted over cars, and lights
flickered in distant buildings.
Far from town, telephone poles
were swept down in the storm
their lines penned the sheep
in a parallelogram field
bounded by phone lines and barbed wire.