Other Beds by Marc Woodward

Some are soothed by the furry ticking
of a bus on the street outside.
The waft of deep fried cooking
from the midnight Chinese,
even the lairy looking lads
Oy!-ing home at one AM.
Then four o’clock taxis
and the rumbling of trains.
These urban constancies
keep everything in check for some –
they pin them to their place:
create a sound frame
round the picture of their lives,
set them in their home.

But I can’t sleep in their beds.
At night I keep the window open
to hear the little brook
skeltering under willows,
owls calling from the oak,
the whickering of a moth
around the porch light.
I hear you breathing
pinned in your frame
not by particulating buses
and the rhythm of traffic,
but by the pirouetting of the earth,
the travelling of bats;
a dawning of chiffchaffs.

Marc Woodward lives in rural Devon – but you can probably guess that from his writing! He has been widely published – recently in Acumen, Caught By The River, The Clearing, Prole and Popshot. His chapbook A Fright Of Jays is available from Maquette Press and more work can be found at http://marcwoodwardpoetry.blogspot.co.uk