From This Height

after Tony Hoagland



... of my second floor bedroom
window, I confront the clock
on the church, its round face
watches my waking
spies on my sleeping –

no, I don’t deserve the pleasure
of this simple rented house
overlooking the wren-filled
sycamores, the wide water
with its busy boats and castles

nor do I deserve the pain
of this loneliness, lasting
til dawn, when light slips in
creeping over the supple sea,
drawn by the slow clock of the sun –

everyday, as I climb the hill
behind my house, up granite
steps, over the old cemetery
where history’s bodies lie
lost and unmarked, I commit

an act of forgetting the sadness
I let the morning make me new
celebrate the wide world around
me as the church clock chimes
its first hour of the day, below.