This small piece of sky that I call my own,
contained by day, sap stained, overgrown,
scaling the bricked heights of terraces new,
cut to the white of the cloud bobbing blue.
A place to sit, smoke a fag, reminisce,
read the papers or something like this –
(an infant descends his birth chamber stairs) –
Hardy’s – tales of love and rough country fare.
Then the first quickening of life to come –
the transcendent eyes of the very young,
visioning the world as only they can,
decrying the slow, the weary the wan.
Then by night – for often I sit by night –
the stars, the planets cast ethereal light.
This small piece of sky that I call my own,
measures out my life in a midnight zone,
not with coffee spoons, as Eliot said,
but with Vega – Deneb – Altair, instead
that familiar triangle of summer,
rising from the East in pure white colour
and grasped in a dream-like sleepless embrace,
casting a cold light, on a mask-like face.
Now to this piece of sky I must say adieu,
for the time has come, as it must, I knew,
to pack up the good and the bad times all,
and find out the new of what must befall.
YOU ARE READING
Still Waters
PoetryA collection of metered poems of life, death and everything in between.