Before it is light
Before it is light, when you’ve dressed and gone into the stable
The animals are lying there
Lying there on beech leaves
And your tiredness like a child you have dragged from its sleep
And through the window you see the span of stars
The span of stars into whose well we are thrown at birth
Like salt into water.
Dissolving there like the clear strike of a bell
Through air, over valleys, separated, and yet
Close as the young eye is to air.
The soft sound a hand makes
Moving through air, forming the loving rug of comfort
The dream of waves on the lake. This memory of sound
Is as real as sound itself. We, moving all the time
With knowledge, our inner ear
And a vast range for sound, based only
On a handful of notes.
So; before it is light, the not-quite-light
Evokes the possibility of hope, moving as it does
Out of darkness, Out of the home of death
Out of the area where infinite numbers reign supreme
Before it is light; a young child
Moving jerkily across a landscape
At first a move; and then stillness.
He sees his breath become visible
In the coldness of air
That could take his breath away
And yet holds in his mind the knowledge
Of parents still sleeping in the warm breath of their room.
Before it is light
When you’ve dressed and gone into the stable
And I am feeling foolish on a farm
When the single cow
Has come down to the single bale
With all her cowness and impatience
And I am such a city person now
With such a city softness
The animals are lying there
Waiting for your presence and what that means for them.
Lying there on beech leaves,
And your tiredness like a child you have dragged from its sleep
And our sleep joining together, again, after a long time,
Like the breath of a child.
And through the window you see the span of stars
The notes, breath, moves through the living pipe
Out over the lazy tongue, the way tide, moves in and out
Over estuary sand, snaking into the river, seen high
From above our moment of peace.
The span of stars into whose well
We are thrown at birth
Like salt into water.
Dissolving and clouding, returning
To those elements that first made life
Before there was life. And how poetic;
How romantic now to imagine
Another star with all those elements
Circling in the well. We give ourselves
All our lives these lies
But only be bitter
If we swallow them ourselves
Like the taste of salt in water: that taste
Has so many variations. I hear it now
Singing on the skin in the sweat of our labour
And our love. I hear
That sound in each sound.
So many, into the well, lost
And so much part of each other
So much unrecognised whirling there
Into the well of stars
Before light.