Up early.

Cabin stashed deep in southern Athens county, Ohio.

Rural.

Mercury burns through night shade clouds.

Coffee should be brewed.

Sneaking around trying not to wake everyone.

Dancing blind on a strange floor.

Toes on alert.

Nocturne 

Eavan Boland 

After a friend has gone I like the feel of it:

The house at night. Everyone asleep.

The way it draws in like atmosphere or evening.

One-o-clock. A floral teapot and a raisin scone.

A tray waits to be taken down.

The landing light is off. The clock strikes. The cat

comes into his own, mysterious on the stairs,

a black ambivalence around the legs of button-back

chairs, an insinuation to be set beside

the red spoon and the salt-glazed cup,

the saucer with the thick spill of tea

which scalds off easily under the tap. Time

is a tick, a purr, a drop. The spider

on the dining-room window has fallen asleep

among complexities as I will once

the doors are bolted and the keys tested

and the switch turned up of the kitchen light

which made outside in the back garden

an electric room-a domestication

of closed daisies, an architecture

instant and improbable.