Early Morning Call

I rose at this a.m. and caught the phone

Its brittle ring,

I picked it up, I held it to my ear!

The static on the line was like

Some ancient offering,

But deep and dark and empty, like desire!

 

And then your voice, it rang down from past ages

Snapped your name,

When like a whip it crackled through the line,

Your voice then conjured clearings where

The crow cawed at the dawn,

And rattled windows shuttered in my mind.

 

Your call was brief, then gone; but I sat still,

As still as stone,

For the wasteland of the past had filled my well,

Where the trees had dripped at dawn

While the clearing echoed ‘Gone!’

And tears of crystal shattered where they fell.

 

There is nothing I can do, life has come and gone

And you

Keep your feelings locked in shackles and in chain,

But if you should call again

I’ll be out, and wandering

On pathways new, where ‘love’ is just a name.

 

David Lewis Paget