A way before She loved to sleep and wake up when she’d slept around the corner, too. Near the cop station on Saturday as usual. Sometimes she’d have had three winks and might have been dozing when she dreamt all the way, trying to sleep on Friday and wake up on Sunday morning but didn’t. She was still beautiful while she slept scraping the wall behind the bed with her knuckles— not actually remembering that— the only place she could go for as long as she wanted. It might have been the same night she stretched and yawned and pulled down the blinds and woke up on a Monday twenty-six years later. Afterwards Maybe because the mass of old trees was not visible from the house The only signs of life flourished in the modest flower of my imagination The old house run-down and peeling stirred uncomfortably like a restless bird in the heat-exhausted sky The minutes shut in their concentration the table returning to tree with my profuse admiration Most of the melody would go in the height of that stumbled-across summer All the wrong shoes and sandals the accepted offer of a ride the abandoned furniture Not even a fan or photographs on the table to overcome my embarrassment The hurts came at night one after the other not just along with the crazy mail which did no harm when the season changed And we drank the evening lying in that solitude united by the full length of our denials because unlike the tears when the pilgrims reached their destination afterwards the house opened inside Countdown 1 Heavy clouds sail low through the raging battle in that ancient place sighted from the hills. Time parcelling old fires carries what remains of the disputed order. The seasons sit pure in their extremes. Variations of folded nights, object and image transporting significance— nothing will pass through the darkening radiance Too late to uncrumple the world of silences, shifts of discord, the quiet lies waving at a distance. In the morning burning sands will reveal the imagined diminishing surface of water. 2 Watch out for the moon. Expect bad weather. Fish scales foretell a bad storm. Moods— like pressure-system winds— may last for days. An old backing wind shapes earth and expected news as buoyant water hangs unsteady in midair. Most wisdom never navigates backwards but moves clockwise on the odd day. Rivers run regnant with shiver, skim through squall and inconstant billows, stay inside the solace of a sudden stir, seek harbour from the gathering runt. 3 Every salt-laden tree can sting cheeks, like the subtle teasing stress of touching grasses or green surf. 4 History is a witch that turned— stopped and hastened, enticed— beckoned memory. Later, it said, not then, not now, turning the moment over and over. Here, it offers blare and spill, a flood of canvas. The willing that looks like belonging. The story of someone— some people— climbing out of a pit, bare arms and feet clawing into effaced rock, sliding over probability.