Out of politeness you probably wouldn’t say,

especially when spring has started false

and hailstones

small as ball bearings

ring the roof

keeping you trapped at the library

a cancelled anatomy book under your arm

– or perhaps it’s a newspaper

and instead you’re under the eaves

looking out at sheet rain

wondering how a street sustains so many cafes and not a single electronics shop.

It’s a cable you need, not a coffee,

but it’s a small consolation.
If asked, I probably wouldn’t say,

instead imagining myself lost in a forest

surrounded by the heady aroma

of peaches, perhaps

enjoying this wintry lapse into drizzle

alcoved under a willow

fingers deep in dark soil.

I probably wouldn’t,

I don’t think so anyway.
I wouldn’t say nothing, though

if asked

if pressed between pages

if, while hours and minutes trickled by

if I

if –

I probably wouldn’t say no

no, I’d think of rally driving and Zen meditation.
When time’s fragments gather together in the same room

like boxes on a calendar grid,

a room say, like the one at the end of the hall

with sash windows and the Edwardian daybed,

when they gather there
I wouldn’t want to say either, either

or as well,

I wouldn’t want to say anything, no,

not nothing, not no, not probably not,

lips stitched against the apologia

of a coming wind

needling

addressing no one

but giving everything away.