O’Clock
At the edge of the sky, a dirty pink
scratches at the permagreen –
it isn’t dawn, it isn’t sundown,
it’s late in the daylight, later
in the season of blame.
If life were a featureless plain,
the courier would come galloping
with news from the cities,
at an hour like this
frozen on the clock-face.
Would have already come,
and the tea brewed, and the leaves read,
and the greenjacket crawling,
infinitely slowly,
up the closed window.
Terence Dooley‘s poems and translations from Spanish have been published or accepted in the last year by Ambit, Agenda, Acumen, Poetry London, POEM, The London Magazine, Brittle Star, Long Poem Magazine, Envoi, Dream Catcher, and MPT.