Coming Alive Again: A Prelude by Kath Rees

Four in the morning and your eyes
blot themselves into being.
It isn’t strange to wake up to the dark,
anymore, to the unwelcome gift
of the buses and their hinge-like complaints
skating across, berating, a solid oil strip.
a left, a shiver of metal
shoulder reaching for shoulder
a nudge, and “Blackbird”
spills out from an ear.
Time, and white noise
for the taking.

Step out of the whale’s mouth.
Already, the trees of sunflowers,
the shifting maple leaves
have begun their root-born chant
beneath the sidewalks,
sipping
to life, to life
against
the seas of rushing feet.

Can you forget your agony for a moment?
Will you set aside the wasted years, the silent scales being weighed?

To hear, as the siren’s belly fills
unwanted spoons click-clacking
like pens,
a something
to have in their hands
is necessary,
like it was for yours.

Under your nose,
the shoes,
feel new,
Slapping pavement
Echo
Skip-
ing
through layers of flesh
to the heart
of the earth
and back your
heart
is not a sound,
anymore

It is a thing.

It swims
It gives
Only,
an audible sigh
a share in the collective rhythm.

It is not them who have decided
It is not the world, that has suddenly become new,
with a stutter of a groan
a clumsiness of notes
short-stopping-

It is your ribs like a door
pried open
to let the prosody wash where it will, scrape if it must,
in the dust, the decision has been made:

I will listen, I will feel,
I will speak.