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 3Β° 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.