And then the night comes, the need to be
gifted the move through, to be without end,
the horizon broken by so many figures and

how the body is mass (the mother and child
asleep become the body), how it all takes
place in a shower of light, falling blossom,

with buses passing, the sound of a seagull,
an absence that makes you grieve and yearn,
for if you knew when the time would be

how would you be patient, a day with lights
when you might travel, the ground beneath
you from place to place, the canal in autumn

silence under leaves falling, the light flaring
on the hill opposite, that flares and settles, flares
and settles, a plane blinking in the night above.