Before Dawn

Penelope Shuttle

I used to wake early, and weep.

Now I wake just as early,

calm as a cloud

in the moony sky outside.

Even thinking about unpaid bills

doesn't make me weep,

though I used to weep and weep.

4.30 a.m. No way of getting back

to sleep so I listen in

to the silence of a world dark and at rest.

I know other women

wider awake than me.

I hear the silence beyond their weeping,

streetlamps outside their windows

won't blank out for hours and hours yet.

I used to wake early, etc. . .

Now I let my old friend Sleep

go his own sweet way,

listen to whoever is wide awake in me,

running the flats of her hands

over the rough walls of the world,

looking for what?

A way in? A way out?

You tell me.

-o0o-