From the window

I push open the windows.

Sun-warmed air flows to forgotten corners;

turbulating sensory vignettes, emotions, memories,

evoked in scents of a world held distant.

Years ago,

At the collapse of what I thought was life,

I would stand protected behind glass,

watching the garden’s green threshold:

fences veiled simply in ornaments of ivy.

Both steadfast and changeable,

they would thrum with Spring’s thrashing blue tit chicks

or lie ponderous under fresh winter snow,

but always present.

A buttress against the tumult of life beyond.

I yearn to recapture that comforting structure,

the constants, trodden paths and rituals of lives.

Whether exquisite or mundane,

There is beauty in the expected and known;

of what is mine.

The benign inattention of nature,

It ebbs and flows to a time unknowable.

Rituals are adhered to both happy in my absence,

yet ever present for attendance.

Gifting a freedom to move between worlds.

But now,

Life must be lived as facsimile,

in impersonations of self,

bar the sense of incandescence.

Those transient and unknowable moments,

spontaneous meetings,

the conference of the unknowable.

The life within life;

it remains on pause,

for now.