a carafe of white noise

Menthol fumes
drawn in through
slightly barbarized teeth,
and out
into the overcast morning air
joining the mist
over the tended green landscape
of the 'invalid settlement,'

where the sparsely rippled stillness
is observed
by the black cat
in the window,
set against
a drawn white fabric wall

outside the enclave
and its evening gardens,
the roads go on:
curving
linking
congesting,
the myriad spinning wheels
of the mad world
turning and churning
for love and might,
life and spite...

maybe some century
they'll get it right