As it slowly awakens
“Give me in its parcel of hours
a slippery, silken forgettable day.”
. (Moniza Alvi)
You stiffen. Then you sigh. Nothing’s moving now,
not for the longest time. It is so quiet that I almost
hear your blood slow down and settle to a quiet humming.
The low, crazed buzzing of a bluebottle
reminds me of the old and rumbling iron beasts:
Those half-forgotten, sweaty mornings
of early tank manoeuvres, two or three
abandoned fields from where we stayed,
in my grandfather’s summer cottage,
where the flies that didn’t end up caught
in the gentle movements of the lacy curtains or
stuck to sweaty, slowly spinning, serpentine ribbons,
sometimes, in the morning, walked the skin of oranges
(stacked in the cracked, fake Grecian bowl on the breakfast table)
like lazy astronauts, out for a stroll on an alien but kindly planet.
I watch your hand now, as it slowly awakens
to send off a pompously fat, priestly black fly
that had been feasting on our cooling sweat.