red sky cast offs

to that of a deeper, postcard moon

just a flick, a screwed off lid

of a jar saved from recycling

remaining now as a piece of sound – the one

bracketed indication of rain

not as it is but as it is collected

on a wave-like surface made of tin

the ding of a machine, a bird scuffles

just a chick, now a honk

but not a goose (what would it be

doing up there?), then more scuffling

an animal hard to imagine

puppet-like – a day when it dims

“to make up for yesterday”

so you sweat inside a plastic jacket

but need it for the rain and

a siren cuts through it

to remind you of something

the previous bracket of life, twenty-five

minutes ago, unlocking the door

and coming around the side

the moving weight of cars, not

hostile but not altogether

friendly either (what if you had

an engine beneath you?) their

pleasurable version of floating

around, sleep in your eye, a radio

still as a drum, porous, agreeable

and annoying, a day: a gallery

or a tram, why not both? damp

salty surfaces and people hanging

their jackets up, sighing as if the weather

were a newspaper, dangerous day,

singing, ebullient outside, teeth

gritted against the weather, ‘the first

wave’ as musicians fold pillows over

and go back to sleep, toast

from wood-like, two-day-old

bread: put what you don’t eat

in the compost, and remember

the slighter changes in depth or pressure –

now a gull, yesterday a magpie

city birds, a teaspoon against

porcelain, a brush with the day, so far

so good, gathering – –