Waiting

I am waiting as the night comes in waves,
Waiting as soft foot steps home-hurrying pass,
Waiting as imprints and half-prints are hushed to insect hum.
And under the cover of a willow’s grieving bends
I wait and watch the water swallow dark.
The day is over-worked and aching for bed,
As longest day is done,
As autumn begins her distant beckoning.
And night creates such colours to make the most of her short call.
And through the budding curtains I see the boat.
Rounding the bend with low slung heaving,
The water giving smooth progress for the sweat.
I cup the paper ship in my hands-
All folds and creases binding her will to mine.
I am holding time and my breathing,
But Battering wings shatter the stillness;
A birds sets flight from above me
And in the vacuum left behind,
A feather falls with rocking motion on the updraft.
My hand shoots into the twilight,
Pale and vein mapped as paper written in blue ink.
The plume is young and dark, traced with fluff.
It crowns the ship and tickles in the wind.

I am waiting as the oars drag onwards,
As the slop and slide rises
As my ship begs to be cast off,
I am waiting for the air to pass,
I am waiting for the birds to lift.

And off, off, off on the glass surface,
Barely a bend as she sails,
Night-feather flickering, like a candle in reverse.
And the rower sees the messenger cutting her path towards him.
And the rower scoops her sodden form just before the wreck.

But I am nothing to the night.
Off down dark paths and over clipped lawns.
As the rower reads the letter.
And too changes course.

The Lady in Blue

“And the clock”, said the Clockmaker, “shall chime the days,
And the bells will ring out to sea.
And the men at arms will fall away
When the wars write their own decrees.
And the Woman in Blue shall sing her last
As her sailor knows not his own sails.
And she’ll pack up her birds in cages shut fast,
And ask again to ring out the bells.
And time will take our freedom away,
As though it were a door made of locks;
Each turn of a key a new minute drawn,
And each cog a tick-followed-tock.”

And the Lady in Blue knew the truth
As soon as the Clockmaker said
That the clock, oh the clock, will render the days,
Will craft the sunrises from lead.

So she took up her birds and descended the stairs
To a chamber below ocean rock.
She plucked all their feathers and cut off her hair,
And set one thousand keys to their locks.
And with all the down and the hair from her head
She carpeted the walls and the floor.
She feathered cell, feathered not bed,
Her sailor turned the keys tight in the door.
And so, the ticking from the Clockmaker’s hands
Resounded across the shores.
But the Lady in Blue, deep beneath the sands,
Could hear none but her birds aching calls.

And so, with no time, no tick-followed-tock,
The Lady in Blue was set free.
Freed from the minutes – made free by the locks,
Keys spread across fathoms of seas.