Staring through the cold white cross across the door’s misty glass.

It’s just after dawn and it’s too cold for me.

I’m longing to be out in the garden again, longing for summer,

because out there is whole blissful world of birds and breeze and breathing.

Arches of sparkling sunlight and a hot day’s slow fat flies,

birdsong and traffic noise and the distant droning of a mower.

These are my eternal now, the now that is and was and ever should be.

My wife comes sighing into the room, green towel covering her wet hair and half hiding her heavy eyes

Her sad smile reminds me of the brittle little night we just shared

Another cold tight night with no sleep and no comfort.

 

Two hours later and the old road is rising acutely in front of me

as I push myself weary up to the warm café,

to chat tiredly, eye-rubbing and stretchy

with warm friends while I chew slowly on thick pastries.

Then head down to work where the early morning dirty office steps stink of foul dog shit

I check my shoes, check the carpet and then get greeted

with a scowling screwed up angry face off a passing old man,

as I sluice the steps with a grotty mop bucket.

 

I close the door behind me and sit looking for peace lumpen on the floor.

I am the air and I am nothing but everything I see I feel,

but how can I forget myself when I need me to remember to forget?

The air doesn’t know that it is the air, the air just is.

So what if I don’t recognise any of these splashing flashes of brightness

that scatter like sparrows across my closed eyelids?

So what if I could truly forget what it means to be me?

Would I cease to be or would I cease being worried about it?