Early Bird

I love that small silver thimble full of time
before the start of the day.
A little quiet time to get the job done
before all the work starts getting in the way.

It is just me, backed by a little music
played on a vacuum cleaner - full drone –
by another someone, somewhere
as the snakes hiss in the boiler by the door.

The empty halls hang on to last night’s forgotten things.
A letter home rests on the bookcase,
a list of spellings lie unlearned on the carpet
and the chewed stub of a pencil clings desperately
to a cold window sill.

And in this classroom stands a steaming cup of dark coffee,
it’s scent climbing into an air
that is as silent and still as an abandoned drum,
and loaded with the tension of a starting pistol.

A Bad Workman

This evening, surrounded by the darkness of the empty house,
the black nib of my pen points expectantly
at an empty space on the page.
A menacing spearhead of ink and insistency.
Just a phrase or even a well modified noun
and I’ll back off, it seems to say.
But it rests there as still as the judge’s gavel.
It brings to mind an image of a gundog
on dewy heath, standing straight and motionless,
pointing towards it’s far off quarry.

You may have realised that, these are not the lines
that I hoped to write for you tonight.
Right now I am a shelf without a book,
a harbour without lights,
four connected walls that refuse to make a room.
Yet here they are,
pinned between each tick of the clock.
Wedged inside the flaming chorus
of these endlessly whistling candles.