After our supper of cavolo nero,
black greens, from her brother’s garden,
I dug in the woolly dark
of the cupboard under the stairs
for winter coats in August.
Outside the sky was clear
as just-cleaned windows,
every detail sharp, so
as we lay side by side
on my frayed alpaca blanket
looking up we felt flown
to another world, bathed
in radiance. When the rocks
and ice started falling, pencilling
the vast star-strewn ceiling
with their brief lines of light,
long vowels shot out of our mouths,
involuntarily ignited. We were kids
again, learning what beauty is –
there for a second, then gone –
giggling ourselves stupid. No idea
if it was awe or joy or the thrill
of self-forgetting, held safe there,
marinaded in dew, between earth,
heaven and the immensity
of everything we’ll never know.