Wake up with life in mind – blank verse in dust

It’s never been an easy ride to place

a photograph exactly where it ought to be.

Opinions clash, hypotheses contest the wind

before the taste of breakfast turns to memory,

and dust.

Witness the ease that trickles through your base

and turns a little sour, as morning drifts

apart. Is there not spice to whet your appetite

for war and peace? Is there no more sunshine

around the sound of jays and rooks and doves,

and dust?

Behold English Setter on banks prepared for fish

that jump before lunchtime for flies not moths,

a dog that saved my life with eyes he fixed so firm,

until compelled to sit and drools, and I to smile

through dust.

There’s no ending in sight or sound, no door

locked down, nor ice too cold to strip a breath of air

from lungs on fire. Who cut the brambles back,

murdered the blackberries, and left the path undressed?

Awake with life in mind, unheart me now before the rain,

you gods of sleep, come do your best, sustain

this chimera of dust.