The first meagre minutes of the day
can’t tempt me from bed, but something from my fever years drives me
out and I am
in a low, peculiar vantage point,
the screen window above me
catches nettling light I squint through, looking
for the sick heat of other days
for a way out not through this gouged place
for roots not split shells, old names
or chastisement for a fool returning —
my gaze has drifted.
again I look slantwise up. from nowhere
an impossibly opal sunrise
circles the world in pearl ember,
look! I close my eyes and miss you
I haven’t written from this place for years, barely read.
that part of me doesn’t want to eat,
knows like old cats and toothless elephants
know, that sustenance is not the answer,
know to look
elsewhere, but not anywhere I can find
the wind
ruffles the sky,
listen
are you listening with me?
as water runs softly over my face, falls in tiny thuds
to the wind
tousling
the shifting sides and secret nooks
of that bright unlikely expanse…
a white tarp, of course, stretched over the neighbours’ roof
eyes pushing forty have grown no wiser
and lead me no better than before,
but what did they see for that moment?
somewhere beyond a membranous surface
I took for the sky
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