It Is Your Mind That Creates This World Poem by Kathy Greethurst

I walked within the walls of the clink clink can
and sat down on an upturned crate.
I looked out of the paneless window at the turquoise sky
nailed up over Himalayan peaks.

A wild river mirrored the whitewash clouds -
sun obscured from view, no monks in these mounts,
no fish in the river, just me and my captors,
bleary and disorientated.

I looked at the grass - there were tufts
as small as snakes on a skim of stones.
I felt hopeful - my visions were memories
of Mandela, McCarthy and Waite -
and hellholes for hostages, dark and silent,
nights that blurred into days, days that blurred into nights,
clinking chains and keys, rowdy radios, twisted TV aerials,
bloody beatings, Kalashnikovs and hand grenades,
dead flies trapped in dusty webs, rubble, muck buckets,
a battered book and pencil stub, dried bread and boiled egg,
sticks for knives, fingers for forks, oily lukewarm water,
the stench of the ditch passing into the past.

In those days, the snake tufts gave me hope.
Lush, luscious grass sprouting from a seam
of thick loam in spring. I sit on my bench
and watch. Fish have returned.