Summer, 5.30 am

Why is it I wonder, why is it, that this, this lull, this silence, at

5.30 am on a summer morning, before onset, before burning gold and cornflower blue, before the others are up and about, why is it that this is so matched to my mood*, as if, but only as if (I’m not saying this is real) my soul can expand and expand into the silence, into the stillness, and meet with no hard boundary, meet with nothing not-me.

the roominess of being alive, the body at once there in its pulse and purr and also immaterial, unimportant; for everything somehow seems, from the chair to the window to the clouds, places or points wherein the mind is at home. That blue-black cloud, for example, motionless, impending, seems in no way bellied with menace, but in complete agreement with me, and I with it, sat simply in the shape of its being-there, offering no opposition. And the pavement, the curtained flats that face our flat, are all simply paused, receptive, as restful as me, and ready as me for the day that will, on this open page, with noise and busyness, write itself.

And what will I do this morning? I will drop off my son at school, and, rather than simply cycling back here, to the flat, I will stop at the old wooden bench overlooking the fields, and sit and, unfolding all of my acres of calm from within, join hands with this moment, this early silence, as though the two moments were co-conspirators, each moment touching in with the other, stood on the bridge holding hands.