Up on the Roof
You wonder why it is they write of it, sing of it,
till suddenly you’re there, nearest you can get
to flying for jumping and you’re alone, at last,
the air bright. Remembering this, I go
with my too-light jacket up to the sixth floor,
out onto the roof and I freeze under the stars
till he comes with my too-heavy jacket, heavier
and heavier, as he tries to muffle my foolishness.
A blanket on a fire (he says) and it’s true
I am left black, bruised a little, smouldering.
You can sit with a book up there and reel in
life with someone else’s bait. You can let your eyes
skim the river, bridges, banks, a seagull’s parabola.
At night you can watch the sky, those strange galaxies
like so many cracks in the ceiling spilling secrets
from the flat above. You can breathe. You can dream.
But he turns to me, as you’d coax a child
in the back of a stuffy car: we could play I-Spy?
I look at the black and blue above and the only
letter I find is ‘S’. I cannot name
the dust of starlight, the pinheaded planets,
but I can join the dots to make a farming tool,
the belt of a god: all any of us needs is work,
mystery, a little time alone up on the roof.
~ Maura Dooley