Wake up! Percolating
travel-sized toward town,

the moon is already cheese-round
in a soft-starred dressing gown.

Two children coax a cat to school,
but it doesn’t need their education.

Hoods and frost-buckled shoes
glimmer on pavement conveyor belts.

Lucky ones get the car.
I see someone’s littered Maltravers (again).

The sky’s a comforting grey,
overlays of pink and blue acetate.

Is this City’s crafting hour?
Glued fingers on gelid Pritt Stick bus stops,

a collage of bare trees,
bricks in a garden in neat heaps.

It’s 3° below but someone’s got a window open:
placid songs draped sluggishly across the sill,

tumbling major chords, a smile
as I look up and wave.

Hot breath air-kissing
cigarette chimney smoke,

sweeping past concrete doorsteps
dusted and rough-planted

along a tissue paper horizon,
ghost-striding before 7am.