Noises Off (Poetry)

Close behind the thermal curtains
night stands solid, ribbed with pines,
and tardy sleep, so late in coming,
loiters, stubborn, vague and blind.

Along the edge a low voice calling,
disembodied, penetrates
winter dreams before grey dawning’s
traffic drone obliterates.

Throughout dull day a distant chainsaw
worries at the rain-soaked wood,
shreds the skyline to raw bluntness
where the swaying elm-tops stood.

Three long nights — the hush unbroken —
hollow hours, rolling dumb
ears that strain to catch an echo
haunting branches, severed, numb.

No wind to moan or rain’s soft banter
comforts an abandoned moon
curving, frail, her bloodless sickle,
patient for the hunter’s tune

rippling over air turned liquid,
bubbling from a feathered throat,
swallowed by the world’s cold darkness
stretching shapeless and remote.

Then, around the turn of midnight,
a single note unlocks the spell —
an open vowel whose melancholy
signifies reproach, foretells

a future where a man-made desert
spreads its silence undisturbed
by hunting owl or forest spirits
crying in the guise of birds.