Winter Commute
I.
I have not known how to shape
This poem—
I found it, drowsy,
Quarter-to-six in winter
In the cold of an unfinished floor
And the cold of the tap
And the cold of my pale extremities
Exposed on all these fronts
I found it in the rush of blood—
Otherworldly whirring
A sickening thud against the bathroom mirror
I bumped it when my head
Hit the slanting ceiling
Here, under the morning-frosted eaves—
Cold clinging to my silent throat—
My blood fire before my brain could focus
On the liquid fear—
Her eyes and mine—
Met in the unsuitability of place and time
I opened all the doors,
And the wren flew out into the delicate pink.
I cannot now call her back,
Just to sit for a poem.
II.
eggs on a train
An ever-lengthening linograph
Is drawn across the window—
One like it I have seen before,
Part of an exhibition on rural English landscapes—
Cleverly watercoloured over the endless dark lines of hill
The window lino is thrice as clear:
trees in black ink over old-red sky
deep, textural cuts of half-munched grass
and cows hand-dotted in delicate purple
It feels as though I should not eat
The breakfast sandwich wrapped in cellotape—
The gallery staff would surely redirect me to the canteen.
III.
the library elevator while there were construction works on level three
I know from the shifting of your gaze
You feel all out of hand—
Silence does not disturb me,
You did not greet,
And wish you had.
You seem your empty hands to twitch
Without moving a nail—
I rest in my back corner,
It does not pain me
To be still.
I would like for you to be at ease,
But know your pain is I—
Discomfiting in transit—
Suspended here
With me.
IV.
It has been so long since I’ve taken a day
Even on the sly
From the hundred little routines
That have rooted their weed-tubes
So deep that they had formed a subterranean
Network before I saw the ground disturbed.
Sleeping and waking before my dream has ended—
Snatching a date bar, walking—late otherwise
Seeing the clean air only through the smutty Sligo Line windows
So many little pathways—neuron-trails of habit,
Minding hours and hoarding minutes—
Train at 7:03, and those three are the seconds on which the whole day’s work depends—
Try to peel off the topsoil of the brain,
Tubes thick as sod-brick roots
So long since I have taken a day
To till it back to softness that now only a violent spade
Could make the incision, deep to
Cut the flow of the habitual sap
And watch the milky-white puddle
Drain old promises dry
Catherine Godlewsky is a postgraduate researcher at University College Dublin. Her current work pushes the boundaries of formal criticism by blending critical and creative elements, and much of her poetry takes inspiration from the interplay between nature and its perception.