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Ian Caws

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All In The Morning Early

That night he sat, rebuilding the landscape
in his head, the trees by a riverbank,
an old electricity sub-station.
But it was no good. Nothing he could think
of could set her walking across that deep
canvas, nothing. Only cows in a field
and long winged birds, flying in formation
reminded him of time and how he’d failed.

So as dawn spread, he looked along the wall
and watched bright dust settle on the pictures,
wondered if her skin flakes were present there.
He moved some cushions, rearranged the chairs,
wiped his mind of all remembered things while
she, who, it seemed, tidied every room
she’d entered, conferred, like a stranger’s stare,
some sense of unease, something hot, like shame.

Until she gathered in the bright morning
by the breakfast things, becoming more real
round her absence. And he, among routines
in which he barely saw her as a rule,
began, through the cold, to find new meaning
from the words she’d said. And without hoping,
he called her name, noted the hourly tones
of the clock, a floor that needed sweeping.

 

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