Through
veiled
darkness,
before dawn
dissolves into grey,
I see a crack on the ceiling.
In the last hours of night I lie wounded on my bed.
Insomnia predicts the worst.
The crack is growing.
I feel doomed
watching
it
grow.

I
skipped
optics
in physics,
bored by refraction,
and teachers' blackboard diagrams,
scripture too - God's diluvian promise to Noah,
'I set my rainbow in the cloud.'
I thought it nonsense.
Tricks of light,
naÏve
kids'
stuff.

In
my
window
a crystal prism,
suspended to catch the morning,
looks across roofs to the shape of hill where the sun waits.
On clear days the light will reach us
the crystal and me,
but I lie
watching
the
crack.

The
sun
rises,
refraction
saturates night's death,
colouring its nocturnal ghouls.
Nature's extravagance is bordering on chutzpah.
Crack? What crack? There are no ceilings. We're all free to rise,
rainbow-touched
Noahs
in
space.