These are the courtyards of the ordinary.
These are the floors of the tenement;
the floor of the woman who trails them, of the plain
wings of  windows, the silent courtesy
of iron railings, of the intensely white event
of a wedding dress that will never be worn again.

Below them the vortex of the yard in which tears
gather like rain in buckets along with other encumbrances.
The woman dreams a city. The bride makes the bed.
The groom strokes the bride's hair. Nothing appears
to be missing. Nothing vanishes. Light dances
all by itself as if the building were untenanted.
 
 

2. Cards in the Garden

They're playing cards in the garden, or it might
Be a country chalet, a dacha of some sort.
The table folds, you think. It serves to support
Their elbows as they lean forward in a tight
Group. Time is the unborn child about
To be born in the mechanical eye that you know
Must be present. You watch them now in slow
Motion, the pack on the point of being dealt out.

Not so much slow motion as stillness, and not
The authorial you, but I. The man in the dark
Shirt is my father, horrifyingly slim,
As if time reversed had eaten him or cut
Half of his substance, leaving just this mark,
This light kiss, as if it could not help but love him.
 
 

3. As If Early Spring

It feels like early spring but it is June.
The sun retires behind a gauze of cloud,
as if to taunt a pasty faint-edged moon
whose face would not stand out in any crowd..

Summer lurks in the distance, keeps its eye
on clocks in the grass, waiting for its hour.
The wind sprints down the road, makes a sly
dart  past the window chased by a cold shower,

anxious it might be caught and disappears
over the field. I watch leaves tremble. Light
is a thin suspension, a soup in which float

tiny specks of life, invisible tears,
brief shudders of birdsong anticipating night,
their music filtering round a single note.