Do you remember the feeling
of how things appeared
when you went home early
from school, alone?
I had a sense of
this is how the world is
when I’m not in it.
Hedges and houses seemed new –
more themselves, different
to 7.20 hedges, and home-time houses,
as though they weren’t expecting me
back so soon. Brick and leaf
breathed, or seemed to
fill their molecules more easily,
at ease with each other.
I would wonder, without
the words to wonder:
we are all former friends, one body
of space dust, mingling.
I walked the seven minutes or so,
from bus stop to door,
through the still village,
marking off milestones:
here’s the church clock face,
the pub, the friendly horse
coming up to the fence
and a dog bark or birdsong
would announce themselves
as the main players
in our place. It felt like
animals were in on the secret
of being or not being
and were welcoming me
back to the beginning.
