The first thing I do when I wake is to listen.
I listen as the light eases into the sky,
as it rises from morning cool to its noontime height.
I listen to the rhythms of the neighbour's washing machine,
or to linen tumbling dry.
The dryer wheezes like a fragile grandfather.
These walls reverberate emptiness,
I try and fill it up with emptier melodies.
Then the random thought arrives.
I recall a friend's dismay upon discovering
that art is artificial;
an attempt to replicate that which made you feel.
Outside, depression hangs over the city,
as if setting the scene for heartbreak,
as if it knew someone important had died today.
