When I lie in bed at 5:45 AM
Anna is getting ready to leave for work
down in the yard,
and a slight shine from the car's backlights
bounces off the snow
and makes visible the bedroom's ceiling in a reddish hue,
until the walls flare up in the headlights' ever-presence
as she backs out of the garage,
steps out briefly
with the driver's door ajar,
pulls the garage door down with a quick, rattling noise,
and clicks the heavy padlock shut
with a loud, clinging determination in the cold,
while the car radio war reports spill out onto the farmyard,
until the door is shut
& the reporter's voice becomes muffled and unintelligible
and the light changes character & intensity
as she backs up against the carriage slide,
puts the car in a low forward gear
and turns the Japanese four-wheel drive away
from the garage, down the birch alley
toward the country road,
while the engine and the disquieted light
around the bedroom upstairs
concludes its morning ballet,
short & itchy though it may have been,
as the winter tyres make a loud crackling noise
in the brittle snow cover, almost like fire crackers
down by the house, and disappear;
the room falling back in its dark silence,
albeit having gained a peculiar,
deaf, symbolic, unregisterable noise in the process,
me switching on my bedside reading lamp,
reaching for the pen, penning this,
though seeing no real reason
to prolong this early state of alert any longer than this!