This moment gazes from the kitchen window.
Its mouth tugs down at one corner. It could do
with blowing its nose. At least it’s not stuck
to a Monday…and it is still morning, the only time
when hope has its tie roundly knotted.
Rain crowds the glass…the trees beyond
look tired of sailing the hours with arms anyhow.
This moment wonders how faith feels,
if it could sing a church door’s ponderous creak.
It remembers that girl in the café the day before,
how her fingers woodpecker’d her phone
till she collapsed within her jacket
and sobbed to beat the band. How would she feel,
pulling a church door behind her, listening to
a whole other colour of stillness? That it was home
or a kitchen of distant neighbours who have no idea
of the name on the envelope that was mailed to her
in error? Would she sit quiet among the radiators
tickling their lungs into breath? Or would she say,
no, not here either, and dislodge a prayer book
with the button-up swing of her coat?
This moment watches a brindled cat
as it suffocates a branch,
then suddenly feels as cold as someone
who’s forgotten they’re wearing pyjamas
deep into afternoon. It turns away.
Come the time, this moment may seem
one of the happiest ever…to be tucked
under a lapel along roaring streets
or in the blowy silence of another phone
ringing out, another lover emptying promises
into a bar-room charity tin, another friend
gone to the moon. Then taken out
and turned over and under – but gently,
so as not to shed a drop of rain
from that morning window, or unseat
the brindled cat, or scupper the hope
that the sobbing girl’s next call
was sunrise, a path stretched clear
past all the standing pools, the iron nettles.