Watching, January 2021

The new year slouches forward, unlovable,
barely acknowledged but for tired, gritty eyes
and a muffled scream into the kitchen towel.

Pale moonlight streams through the blinds,
watching the night in shiftless wakeful patterns,
patience hardening into endurance as ache into milk.

There’s no forbearance from the Wolf’s Moon
brazenly hanging over rooftops at dawn, flaunting
her silver coin aureole amidst satellite dishes and high wires.

She filters the winter daylight with an ashen smile.
Oceans drag in her wake like the sweep
of a bridal train washing the slagheap of grime.

What happens when she is too jaded to renew the cycle?
What if she decides to finally shake off the tedium
of earthly responsibilities and fling herself up and away

into space, cackling madly, her bald skull shorn of its offices,
glorying in her solitary rampage as she rises up,
shadowless, in the counter-light of the stars?

Ruth Lexton is an English teacher and writer. Her poetry has appeared in Abridged, Shooter, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Drawn to the Light Press, The Alchemy Spoon and London Grip. She won second prize in the Hexham Poetry Competition 2023 and was longlisted for the Aurora Prize 2023.