Winter Solstice

London, 1983
Unlocking the door
most evenings now I look up
and see the stream of headlamps
flash along rain-fringed guttering —
light sped through a tremulous blackness…
Today, after long rain
the sky is a clear ice-grey,
my window speared by raindrops
random and separate as stars. The sun
flares as it falls behind the amber sill,
a curved shard tilting
unbearably into my eyes…
The raindrops fill with flame
but hold — their solid clearness now
crescented with darkness. When night comes
the room is a bright shape
on the glass, with window, doors,
opening into blackness.
Later, moonlight will tunnel
a path down through the skylight
infusing the darkness of the alcove
where I sleep… I shall, perhaps, lie
waking as the small hours build steps towards
day, half-sensing the light,
the dark, press against each other,
take shape inside each other, reaching
even to the dreamspaces through which I float,
and the depths where moonstones grow
inside ice-clear darkness.