Still Waters

This Small Piece of Sky.

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.