Troubles

There's always the worry
of change. In the forest
species are going and the
old oaks no longer stand sturdy;

they show their thinning
crowns against a blue
sky's sarcasm. Labour changes
circumstances faster

than the work-force can adapt,
leaving its casualties
like flat toads along the road.
Worse, there's longing

for all you've left behind –
refugees think back sadly of
the sound of the muezzin
over the cedars in the

early morning, and the expat
wallows in a back number of
his country's leading paper –
no ibis can replace

frogs in the pond at dusk, and
the Superb Starling, a flash
of brilliant blue-green, is no
match for the unprepossessing

sparrows twittering in the bush.
Never mind the lure
of the distance, of the exotic,
of the land of fable

and opportunity, there's
no stronger magnet than home.
Yet it's not homesickness
that constitutes the main worry;

neither change nor pollution
is your real headache.
It's floundering words and
clashing miscommunication,

and all the wrong choices
and the empty skins of
old hopes still carefully kept
in the boxes they came in.