This poem, written over ten years ago, contains some imagery (the plant growing in an old shoe) that has recently been echoed in the new Pixar film, Wall-E (see Hamgray's review below). I'm not saying that the idea was pinched from me - just that the Zeitgeist keeps manifesting itself!
Settling in was like saving the planet,
all that anxiety
over space, colour and temperature,
knowing when to destroy and when to nurture.
Our first flat a miniature Terra.
Once I came back to discover
that a bird had flown in through the window.
A foreign body,
unwanted as the outrageous cuckoo
in another's nest,
it perched on the angle-poise lamp.
Quick eyes appraised the living-space
as I myself had done
on a first visit,
nervous but intrepid like the bird
whose accidental presence in our flat
might yet make news:
'How a flying visitor became my lodger,
Woman tells of life with feathered friend'.
For although a parrot would be better,
I appreciate the timely symbolism
of this rare cohabitation,
a truce between man and nature.
But enough of millennium doom.
We could use the humour that recycles
shoes as flower-pots
on a neighbour's windowsill,
where daffodills sprout from worn soles
with spring in their step.
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