Angela Cleland
poet  |  novelist

Emma's Porch

​

Emma, it is 8am and the light in the front porch
is the colour of your hair. School is waiting.

​

The barometer is hanging the top side of fair,
its coils and springs pulling both ways,
teasing the atmosphere like a fine wool.
The tension holds the needle static, so the whole 
appears to be broken, as barometers sometimes do.

​

I touch my nose to it and breathe; imagine it is a silent clock
which does time backwards as well as forwards.

​

Of course there is hoovering
and conversations high over the hoovering
and the claim of being “almost ready”.
I am sometimes late to call for you,
you are never ready and there is always hoovering.

​

I count passing cars, bright paint samplers,
as they bobble the patterned glass of the front door.

​

Your Granddad's shoes are gone from the coat stand,
there is at least one jacket less and the smell,
well it is the same, but a note has ceased to sound,
like a vital spice missing from a dish.
I think of each of the objects that hangs orphaned in his shed.

​

I am always waiting in the hallway;
there is no going in with shoes on.

​

I look behind the upright of the coat stand
for that single foam bead 
on the foam bead wallpaper 
where I press my thumbnail every morning.