Morning Sunlight 1952

(Edward Hopper)

A rented bed in a rented room
far from the life I invented round myself
familiar cups, coughs, cushions,
air chewable with unspoken words
the plaintive if... and when...

I have slept in my sun-dress
colour of salmon / mouths / ripe flesh
woken before street sweeper time
by unaccustomed silence and the
mattress ghosts of stranger’s bodies.

I sit for the stark greeting of this new-world light
bright glare of no hiding place.
My own shadow licks the bed
between my thighs, and dents the single pillow.
The sun soaks in and spreads like fingers down my veins.

Out of the window, a long straight road
of eyeless brownstone tenements
reminds me of the track along the sandspit
straight as sunlight, lapped with blue
far from the imposition of brick and glass.

But I shrug off the old skin of the past,
smooth out the dimpled hollow
where my feet rest on the rented sheet.
Life will resume, like the cranking up
of a newsreel in an old movie theatre.