Sadly, I imagine you will wake, too,
because the silence has changed colour,
the way, fluting across a murky water,
a swan’s light may gently startle you,
gleaming through the curtains of your eyes.
Wake, though with the softest of violence,
snow has played you a nocturne of lightest
down, quilted you in symphonic hush,
mesmerised you in your sleep.
A captive audience,
your fidgeting legs are swathed,
your cough stilled, by chords of white –
you are laid to rest at every cadence.
Oblivious to the cold auditorium,
your lulled capillary thoughts
are tingling, pleasantly beating time.
Wake, and they are jerking the pendulum,
flailing, frantically rattling the case;
and you are shivering in your bed –
horribly alone, except for you,
and the Arctic waste to face.
