Garden
I’ve woken at peace;
it’s important not to think. I return instead
to familiar images; steam rising from the boiler
below the house, the pale leaves
on the tree whose name I never learned.
All I’ve ever done with these things
is try to know myself
through their movement in the garden; the way a branch
composes itself after a bird takes flight, or how the lamp
hung from the decking
will turn just so in the wind. All I am doing now
is understanding that the best way to ground myself
in this moment
is to pay attention to the green drops of bud
that have bled from the sycamore, the rain-soaked branches
of the trees in the early light, the heat
of my mug against my palm; it all keeps
the scenarios from my mind, the fractured many worlds
I move between, the same I suppose
as anyone, all of us just meeting from time to time
in this one (with the boiler steam
and morning wind) to pause and rest.
Ryan Norman is a poet from Hull. His work has appeared in The Rialto, bath magg, Poetry Wales and elsewhere. In 2019 he received an MA in Creative Writing Poetry from UEA. He lives and works in London.