Dawning

Brian Walter

I’ve read all the night – now dawn

has lit the east – with little sound

through the dark to disquieten me,

only the last whispers of the rains

or an artless eavesdropping of thought:

I renounced all hope of sleep.

She’s a strange escort, insomnia.

It is now twilit quiet, and I’m lost

in her arms, reading this restless time

away, back to the old Egyptians,

remembering their old creation mound

of the earliest light. I am so far back

that I almost miss the pointlessness

of our immediate rhythms, stirring –

hoots, and the hiss and clack of shunting trains,

the mind-made world of profit and loss

and the timetables they will sweat to keep.

Featured at The Red Wheelbarrow on 13 October 2022