Morning sky

Morning  sky

heavy with deep gray/black clouds

A weighty silence -

not even the birds are singing.

A small brown leaf on my balcony mistaken for something else -

a hessian bag is a sleeping dog.

A slug on the step oozing with some liquid black, you could write your name

with its blood!

A thin cobweb caught on the edge of my lashes

Cold air taken into my lungs

The steeple rising high on the house opposite pierces empyrean space.

One red Camellia clinging to life on the edge of the bush,

it’s the last one until next July. Her reddish/pink blossom a strange beacon amidst

the cold brown husks.

One more cavernous silence before

the celestial eye opens

and rain falls.

Julie Clarke (2012)