You do not know yet that if it had been
Just three months before
The answer may have been different.

I have already seen it coming;
Seen it in these nights that connect us to our past.
To the four-pronged greenery of the sound
Of a helicopter rotor chopping the air above us
As we walked along our long valley of silence.

In this dark I can see the future.
The pathetic insipidity of the skin around her eyes
As I hand in my dog-eared Chemistry homework.

My night is filled all around with images
Of how the Milky Way looks from Grandma’s house
High in the Lake District hills.

And there are hills elsewhere. In the clouds,
Those clouds that become thick
And opaque with dark.
Clouds that will not cloud
The piercing light in the pitch.

I feel odd. Sleep is silence.
Dreaming is memory.
Nothing is lost.