The Four Corners, a poem

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Consigned to my room
With a cough, and
Not wanting to isolate others,
But not wanting to be isolated from them,
I planned a trip.

Buried deep in a drawer
I excavated
That bastion of creeks and contours,
An OS map, 1:550,000
(1 inch to 8.7 miles)

I subdivided my existence
For the next fortnight
Into feet
And hacked a path
Through crisp packets and dead plants.

Initially simple;
Pace four walls and record your route.
Do land's end to John o'groats
Without leaving your room.
Merely imagine Cambridge spires and trudging shires
And supplant the unswept floor for birdsong and byways.
So set off!

1, 2, 3, 4, 1 step over the other and the
Numbers running through my head I
Rambled, walked, skirted, and scrambled
My perfect square;
conjured the country
Its skylarks and hedges and all that lived in there

But soon realised the limits of lyrically
Imagining laundry as the peaks
of striding edge;
The boiler's gurgle not a babbling brook
The flatness of Norfolk in fact bed.

So trudged back
o'er imaginary dales
And in my mattress
Gave up the quest -
What's the point of leaving your room
When you can't even leave
Your head?

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George Millership is a third year student at the University of Edinburgh studying History of Art. You can find more of his work at www.thenotesonmyphone.wordpress.com.