OUTSIDE

View of the aimless lonely game 
of a schoolboy who is early awake 
and goes outside to throw a tennis ball 
against a cooking-apple tree 
and guess the angle of the bounce off the bark. 

It isn’t very noisy play 
(if it can even be called play)
and perhaps the elderly neighbours make no complaint 
because they understand him being there like that 
   on his own
   making something out of nothing
and won’t risk depriving him of his tiny freedom.  

Long afterwards all this comes back – 
the pity and the waste of time – when,
at a church of middle-class euphoria some misplaced hope has led him to,
a woman practicing what they call prophecy there 
places hands on him
breathes
closes her eyes 
and says 

I have this image of you as a boy in an orchard, but terribly lost:
it isn’t a tempting orchard, not a garden of delight
it’s a sort of gloomy blighted moon...
no birds are singing, the wind is sharp and cold
and worst of all there is no fruit.