No opening in the house is shut
but the heat's a cage I have to bear.
By the back door where I burnt
my soles this afternoon I long for air
cool as a fish's belly to creep out
of Pymmes Brook up the park slope
to my fence, press the milky smell
of midnight blades to my face. Not
a ruffle, not even the owl
calling like an obsessive ghost
from clots of trees. Upstairs the curtains
are undrawn and I watch my self in a mist
of cotton nightdress that hides scars,
uneven troughs, veins that have discoloured
skin with spidery purple tributaries.
And there are my other selves, stars
for eyes, leaning towards the windows:
the one with drive who hoards hope,
the limp moaner, the sympathetic self
and she whose glinting thoughts leap
from the dark of her riverbed. None
of these can lower the temperature,
slow or speed up time, shrink hatreds
fostered for centuries, feed rain
to thirsty fields, muzzle the snout
of danger or make safe the small
creature always crouched at my core.
Powerless then, have I no power at all?
Pushing a pane to its limit, I catch
the moon. Across the window bay
a second jumps whitely into
the blue of night. In the glass I hatch
another and another, bat them from frame
to frame, create a skyful of moons,
ring myself with silver clarity. Cool
begins to whisker the rim of the room.
