Diamond Dust

Four days of diamond dust and
people talk of fruit shortages,
Fred down the road tells the
same old story about the first time
he saw a banana.

Maybe, in a distant cave,
someone's laughing by the light
of a lap-top screen that's
showing nature-sown chaos, and it
is the will of Allah.

Silence reigns over Hounslow,
Nimbies dance in still gardens -
until gap-year girls give mum bad
news about two more weeks in Phuket,
over the internet.

The cloud stays, invisible:
carbon footprints shrink to slightly
less than we need to boil
the planet and the sun acquires a
magma areolet.