Small Hours

One a.m.

Villanelle for the night bus

The last bus runs for no one at this hour,
its windows full of someone's lit reflection,
and wakes each empty shelter like a flower.

The driver hums. The heater's lost its power.
He signals left, from habit, no objection.
The last bus runs for no one at this hour.

A fox looks up from chips. A little shower
comes down on all the stops without inspection
and wakes each empty shelter like a flower.

Who is it for, this slow and yellow tower
of light, this kept appointment, this affection?
The last bus runs for no one at this hour.

I've seen it from my bed. I feel the dour
old street forgive itself at each connection,
and wake, an empty shelter, like a flower.

Some things keep on because they have the power
to be expected. Call it resurrection.
The last bus runs for no one at this hour
and wakes each empty shelter like a flower.

Two a.m.

Sonnet with a fridge in it

At two the fridge begins its only song,
a single held B-flat across the floor.
I stand inside its light. I've got this wrong,
I think, and don't know what I came here for.

Half of a lemon. Mustard. Someone's wine.
A shelf of things we said that we would eat.
The kitchen clock insists that it is fine.
The tiles are teaching patience to my feet.

You used to find me here. You'd say my name
the way you'd test a step in a dark house.
The light goes out the same, it goes the same,
the door's soft kiss, the hum, the hunted mouse

of my own pulse. I shut it. Nothing's changed.
The milk's gone off. The dark is rearranged.

Three a.m.

Ghazal of the ceiling

Awake again, I read the fine print of the light on the ceiling,
the headlamps' slow translation, left to right, on the ceiling.

Each thing I should have said at dinner comes and takes its seat.
I win the argument by three a.m., all right, on the ceiling.

My mother's laugh, the dog we had, a debt, a name, a door,
the whole parade files past, dressed up in white, on the ceiling.

Somebody two floors up is walking slowly in their socks.
I know their grief by heart. It has a certain height on the ceiling.

There is a crack shaped like the coast of somewhere I won't go.
I've sailed it, with a fever, every night on the ceiling.

Go to sleep, poet. You have a bed. You have two eyes to close.
And still you wrote this down, and got it right, on the ceiling.

Four a.m.

Five haiku for the bakery on Mill Road

Four o'clock. One light
on Mill Road. Inside it, flour
settles on a wrist.

The radio low.
He shapes what the town will eat
and will not thank him.

First tray from the oven.
The whole street, asleep, begins
to dream about toast.

Steam on the window.
Somebody's finger has drawn
a small, tired sun.

Van doors. The day's bread
leaves warm. He turns off the light.
Now he goes to bed.

Five a.m.

Pantoum for the shift change

The nurses come off shift into the blue.
The cleaners coming on hold wide the door.
A nod is all that either needs to do.
Someone has mopped this corridor before.

The cleaners coming on hold wide the door.
Last night goes out. The next one's coming in.
Someone has mopped this corridor before
and someone will. It's how the days begin.

Last night goes out. The next one's coming in,
a small exchange of coats and car-park keys,
and someone will. It's how the days begin,
with tired people saying thank you, please.

A small exchange of coats and car-park keys.
A nod is all that either needs to do.
With tired people saying thank you, please,
the nurses come off shift into the blue.

Six a.m.

Prose poem with milk

The float goes by at six, electric, whispering, a thing that should have been abolished and was merely forgotten. Its bottles chatter like teeth. Nobody has ever seen the man. We have seen only the evidence: two pints on the step, a beak-hole in the foil, the faint implication that someone, somewhere, knows how many of us there are in this house, and that the number has changed, and has adjusted the order without comment. I think about that more than I should. One pint, since March.

Seven a.m.

The sun comes up the street

light
on the
chimney
then the
slates then
next door's
washing then
the bins and all
the parked cars one
by one remembering
what colour they are and
a man in a dressing gown who
has come out for no reason except
this, and stands there, holding his tea