“Sleep well.”

        Winter. The house is getting cold.

Sight of the grey garden leaves me breathless.

“Hush.”

    I think there is something I should say

Now I’ve left the bedroom, half closed the door

And pressed my kisses on the kids to dry.

Something, suddenly, all so obvious.

I’m shocked I have not seen or sensed before

In this as if I’d known forever way

How love animates material things.

Of course I should have come to this by now,

The man who grew up told the dead have souls,

Books their own lives, pressed wildflowers memory

And even the tell-tale stars their stories.

Yes, love animates material things.

And now I’ve found some truth to tell you three,

Rather than passing on mixed messages—

That blue stranger, outside the wall-less room

Where you put two precious kids to sleep

With hushed looks and promises of morning,

Touching the jointed outlines in the sheets

That try to turn then kick and twitch their last.

“Sleep well.

        See you in the morning.

                            Sleep now.”

All at once still, the little bones lie tucked

Tight in their right angled beds. I spy you

Silently softly swaddle up and shroud

Your so loved gifts to this wrongdoing world.

The fire from your hand brightens on their hair.

I have my own promises of morning

Waiting downstairs for the fridge door to light,

From six blue cans of aluminium

Held tight together in their ammo clip

And the nerve endings of the internet.

How love animates material things

Remains the darkest mystery, maybe

Answerless, maybe beyond enquiry.

Fired with imagination, grandfather

Called maths ‘the language of the universe’.

I saw the flicker in the child’s brown eyes.

What if spaces letters in equations

Try to fill stay vast, unlit and empty

And all our great discoveries offer

Only the enchantment of cave paintings?

Love brings to life material beings.

It’s true these unsaid words are only words,

As if the meaning could be found in words.

Now you have worked the magic in reverse

So unmistakeably the breathing shifts

From thought, vexation, retrospection, guilt

To fixed obedience to sleep.

                                “Goodnight.”

With nothing left to love you leave with no

Love left for any dumb or frozen thing.

                                “Sleep well.”

And from the blackness comes the warmth

Of love and the certainty of morning.