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Aled Roberts

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Working Life

Afternoon: waking. Eight hours to go.
Out the window
the old cranes lean
on the wash of the bay horizon.
Like proud men with
broken backs.

Leaves folded rust around
the wilting railways.
Cradled into brittle tenderness,
the nameless unborns.

Cobwebs on a mother’s
closing eyelashes.

Dawn: the end of a shift. Ten minutes to go.
On the shallow mouth of
the valley a thousand
sulphur candles lit.
Like a last breath,
still on the tongues
of the waking.

For another day. I know

inside the sticking dusk
of still dark rooms,
they smother the
stillborns wailing on
lampshades, picture frames,
and porcelain roses.
Moonlight, the doting wraith,
betrayed by dust, each morning.
Smothered
as lights rage, one
by one, in tiny squares
in tiny cages.

Sad imitations of the
universe turning in the
ancient wink
of a star.

That makes me
smile.

A bird wakes noisily,
and it has ended.
My eyes collapse
around tiny wings,
      scorched on
the dawn air.

I turn to wait
for my father to get up,
so I can sleep in his bed.

I am asleep before
his place cools beside
me, before he leaves
for work.

     Eight hours to go

Page(s) 104

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