Woman Alone by Geraldine Mitchell

When she wakes

darkness

five strokes

of a church bell

close-by the      room still

conceals its contours,

the narrow bed its thin quilt.

The brick floor grits underfoot

like blown sand

as she moves to the window,

pushes open shutters on air

smooth with the promise of heat.

The wake of the ringing

washes the walls of the cobbled street

and above furrowed rooftops

                                                 stars

waver like sparks,

lustre the air with lost notes.

She leans on the sill, feels

the mystery of sound emerging

from silence, returning into it, of being

in time, then out of it,

                          the thinning night,

how her day has been changed before it’s begun

and no-one to know it but her.