The Lost Light

Sometimes I’m surprised there’s light
in dark places, those corridors, those alleys
where you wouldn’t stray if you didn’t need

or here in this prefab house I walk past
once a week with the dog—left lost
at the end of a lane to go derelict

with the one long lamp and no shade
in a room set off from the world
by tea-coloured nets; just the one

dim bulb that hangs like a chrysalis
from a metre of flex, always on
in the dim brown room to so little effect.

Outside where the garden’s gone rank
there’s a site-safety fence on its concrete feet
that skirts the whole place, as if something

malign were just waiting and biding its time
till the small light goes out
and huge brightness comes battering in.

Stuart Henson’s most recent collection is Beautiful Monsters (Shoestring, 2022)   His pamphlet A Handful of Wasps was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Environmental Poet of the Year 2023-2024 award and is out from Shoestring in March.