I’m out there
in the February night –
man at a glass table
balancing oranges in a bowl

and a blue hyacinth in a ceramic pot
just coming into flower.
Can you catch the scent
out there

beyond the window? I wonder.
Catch a version of me
that you knew,
or a version of me

that’s free of you,
in a month, a year to come?
I know I’m out there –
in those multiple rooms of night.

I with my dark blue eye
and questioning demeanour
that has to somehow believe
in all these lives,

believe too in this glass table,
the hopeful, here-and-now weight
of oranges,
the here and now.