I think I feared the morning
I think I feared the morning. As if
it would drop on me like a planet; as if
the first light would wring me from sleep;
as if it would play every ache my limbs
had been ribboned sleepless with
in sadistic symphony; as if
no hour on the pillow could be redeemed
and the first stumble through the front door
would finish me; as if the street’s
first magpie would dig at my eyes
and I would be robbed of its blue wings;
as if the drizzle would not soothe my cheeks;
as if all this were not exactly
what my cells knew would be there when the roar
of traffic from the night was left
to wither, leaving only
this. As if the morning and all
its clarities could hurt me more
than the vague desperation before dawn,
before knowing, before the fall.
Tim Kiely‘s poetry has appeared in: Ariadne’s Thread; Lunar Poetry; South Bank Poetry; the Morning Star; and on the websites the Blue of Noon and Spontaneous Poetics. Most recently he contributed to the Emma Press anthology, Everything That Can Happen.